U.S. students continue to lag behind their counterparts in many countries in Asia and elsewhere in the world, according to the results of a well-regarded international test.

The Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, is administered every three years and tests 15-year-olds in reading, math and science skills.

While U.S. students’ scores remained flat on the 2012 exam, the scores of students in Shanghai, Singapore and other parts of Asia soared.

Shanghai took top honors in all three categories. The United States, in contrast, was beaten out by 29 countries in math, 22 countries in science and 19 countries in reading.

AFT President Randi Weingarten cited the results as proof that Bush- and Obama-era education reforms have failed.

“While the intentions may have been good, a decade of top-down, test-based schooling created by No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top — focused on hypertesting students, sanctioning teachers and closing schools — has failed to improve the quality of American public education,” Weingarten said.

One interesting tidbit from the test results: Preschool makes a difference. On the whole, students who had attended preschool performed better than those who had not.

Washington Post, Dec. 3