The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an important cross-national study of 15-year-olds' academic knowledge and skills. Educationalists and public policymakers eagerly await the tri-annual results, with particular interest in whether their country has moved up or slid down the international rankings, as compared to earlier…

Examined the performance of Irish students on multiple-choice, short-answer, and extended-response item sets from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study to determine whether Ireland's relative rank among the more than 40 countries involved remained stable. Findings provide additional evidence that comparing student achievement…

Data from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) were examined to determine the extent to which the rank ordering of countries based on pupil test performance was consistent across three different item formats: multiple-choice, short-answer, and extended-response. Findings from the analysis are used to make the case that…