In this interview, Jay Greene discusses his new study, which examines student achievement in virtually every school district in the United States and compares the performance of U.S. districts with the performance of students in 25 developed countries.  Greene and his co-author, Josh McGee, find that even the most elite suburban school districts produce results that are mediocre when compared to those of global competitors.

The study, “When the Best is Mediocre,” by Jay Greene and Josh McGee, will appear in the Winter 2012 issue of Education Next, and is now available online.

Readers can check out the rankings of 13,636 U.S. school districts, and see how students in each district compare to students in 25 other nations, in a Global Report Card available on the website of the George W. Bush Institute. There readers can also find a detailed explanation of the methods used to conduct the analysis.