Overview

The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an international assessment that measures 15-year-old students' reading, mathematics, 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 and is conducted in the United States by NCES. PISA was first administered in 2000 and is conducted every three years. The most recent assessment was in 2012.

PISA 2012 focuses on mathematics literacy and also assesses reading and science literacy. PISA 2012 also includes computer-based assessments in mathematics literacy, reading literacy, and general problem solving, and an assessment of students' financial literacy. PISA 2012 results will be released on December 3, 2013.

More information about PISA and resources, including the OECD’s PISA reports, PISA assessment frameworks, and international data files, are available at the OECD’s website.

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