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A blog post by Harry Patrinos, Education Manager at the World Bank, summarizes a recent study in which he and his collaborators aggregated the results of global and regional student examinations beginning in 1965 to enable a broader international comparison of education quality.

The analysis is particularly noteworthy for its inclusion of results for dozens of developing countries, including 19 in Latin America.

Patrinos and his colleagues found that some countries whose efforts to improve education quality go unnoticed due to low scores on individual tests, such as Trinidad and Tobago in the LAC region, are actually showing significant improvements in education quality over time. The researchers also concluded that economic freedom, democracy, and civil rights boost achievement among students.