According to an international report on education in 30 industrialized nations, the United States is among the leaders in public and private educational spending, but America's 15 year-olds score average on international assessments of math, reading, and science.

The latest edition of Education at a Glance, released today by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) at the U.S. Department of Education, also indicates that the U.S. achievement gap between the best performing and worst performing is high among the countries studied.

"In this day and age, average simply isn't good enough," said U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige. "This report documents how little we receive in return for our national investment. This report also reminds us that we are battling two achievement gaps. One is between those being served well by our public school system and those being left behind. The other is the gap between the United States and many of our higher achieving friends around the world. By closing the first gap, we will also close the second. By being faithful to No Child Left Behind, we will provide greater opportunities for generations to come."

The report covers early childhood through university programs, providing 29 indicators ranging from student participation and degree attainment to performance on internationally comparable assessments.

Following are some of the other areas included in the report:

• Investment - Spending in the United States is higher per pupil than the average for other OECD countries on elementary and secondary education, including both public and private sources. When including post-high school education, the United States leads the world in per-pupil spending.

• Class size - The average class size in primary education in OECD countries varies widely, ranging from 36 students in Korea to fewer than 20 in Austria, Denmark, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway and Switzerland.

• Teachers - American teachers are among the hardest working. On average internationally, a primary school teacher spends 792 hours per year at school, but this varies from 650 hours or less in the Czech Republic, Denmark, Iceland, Japan, the Slovak Republic and Turkey to 950 hours or more in New Zealand, Scotland and the United States.

• International Students - The U.S. is the most attractive market for foreign students, with 28 percent of all foreign students in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) area enrolled in American postsecondary institutions - twice the proportion in the United Kingdom and more than three times the proportion in France.

The U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics supplies the data for the United States that appear in the report to the OECD. The report is available for purchase through the OECD website: http://www.oecd.org.

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