Is Israel’s low rank on international achievement tests really surprising?

Israel’s consistently low ranking on international achievement tests has been exclusively attributed to insufficient investments in education or inefficient use of available resources. In contrast, this article shows this low ranking to be a true reflection of Israel’s reality in terms of characteristics that affect the mean ability of its student population to profit from schooling (MAPS). Israel’s actual ranking on the PISA test among the 34 OECD member countries (the lowest decile, in the company of Mexico and Turkey) perfectly matches its expected rank on the basis of MAPS (operationally defined as the proportion of children above the ‘poverty line’).