Overview

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a system of international assessments that focuses on 15-year-olds' capabilities in reading literacy, mathematics literacy, and science literacy. PISA also includes measures of general or cross-curricular competencies such as problem solving. PISA emphasizes functional skills that students have acquired as they near the end of compulsory schooling. PISA is coordinated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an intergovernmental organization of industrialized countries. Begun in 2000, PISA is administered every 3 years. Each administration includes assessments of all three subjects, but assesses one of the subjects in depth. The most recent administration was in 2009 and focused on reading literacy. The PISA 2009 frameworks are available at http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/11/40/44455820.pdf.

PISA 2012 focuses on mathematics literacy and assesses reading and science literacy as well. PISA 2012 also includes computer-based assessments in mathematics literacy, reading literacy, and general problem solving assessments, and an assessment of students' financial literacy. Detailed results of PISA 2012 will be available in December 2013. The PISA 2012 draft frameworks are available at the OECD PISA webpage.

After the initial release of the NCES PISA 2009 U.S. national report and supplemental tables, some minor changes were made to the report text and to the supplemental tables. View the errata notice for more detail.

You can explore the PISA data directly through NCES's online data tool — the International Data Explorer (IDE)