How Much Can You Trust International School Achievement Tests?

Commenter TH compares 2011 results on TIMSS / PERLS to 2009 results on PISA:

I calculated some correlations between the PISA 2009 (15-y/o`s), TIMSS 2011 (8th grade), and PIRLS 2011 (10-y/o`s). 




So, on the big picture, PISA and TIMSS are pretty much in agreement on the global racial hierarchy of math smarts. On the other hand, on the small picture of how white countries are doing, it`s pretty much of a mess. There could be a lot of reasons for this, some inevitable (the test has to choose what to test on by a certain grade, which might not be what that country teaches up to that point), some potentially fixable (one country might try really hard to get students to work diligently on the test, another might treat it as just another test, and a lower stakes one than most).

In the US, the racial breakdown of the TIMSS scores in grade 8 is as follows (SD=100, global baseline = 500)

White 530
Black 465
Hispanic 485
Asian 568
Multiracial 513 


What about for reading?



White 575
Black 522
Hispanic 532
Asian 588
Multiracial 578 
