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Florida Students Struggle On International Test

Judy Baxter via Flickr

The latest batch of international test scores are in and U.S. schools still trail the world's top-performing schools in math, science and reading. The U.S. international ranking on the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, fell in all three subjects.

Florida students scored below the international and U.S. averages in math and science on the PISA exam. The exam is given every three years to a sampling of students around the world.Andreas Schleicher oversees the international group which administers the test. He says the results show U.S. students struggle with basic math more than students elsewhere.

"26% of American 15-year-olds did not reach the PISA baseline level 2. And that is really simple mathematics. This is about using whole numbers. Using sort of simple operations. There's a lot of room for improvement."

Florida was one of three U.S. states to break out its results on the test. Both Massachusetts and Connecticut students earned higher scores on the exam.

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