In this paper, we decompose worldwide PISA mathematics and reading scores. While mathematics scores are still tilted towards boys, girls have a larger advantage in reading over boys. Girls’ disadvantage in mathematics is increasing over the distribution of talents. Our decomposition shows that...

Despite being the poorest or second poorest participant, Vietnam performed much better than all other developing countries, and even ahead of wealthier countries such as the U.S. and the U.K., on the 2012 and 2015 PISA assessments. We provide a rigorous investigation of Vietnam's strong...

To provide evidence on the drivers of the quality of education in the country, this study focuses on the correlates of test performance of 15-year-old students in the Philippines. It aims to quantitatively measure the roles of individual, family, and school characteristics in test performance....