Learn about the world’s best performing education systems and what sets them apart.
NCEE provides information about and analysis of the education systems in top-performing countries around the world. With the release of the 2018 PISA results, NCEE has identified a new list of top-performing countries. We identify this group of countries by looking at achievement in all three tested subjects. We also eliminate any top performers who did not perform at or above the OECD average on at least one of two key equity measures: percent of resilient students (students from the lowest socio-economic quartile who perform at the highest levels) and percent of low performers (those who perform below level 2 on PISA).
The current list is: Canada, China (including the provinces of Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang), Estonia, Finland, Hong Kong, Japan, Poland, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan. Archived profiles of top-performing education systems on previous PISA administrations can be found here. Our objective is to learn from countries and economies and adapt those lessons for use in the United States at the national, state or district levels.
