A 2006 fourth grade literacy study, including 38 countries and 5 Canadian providences, just released its results and showed American students ranked slightly higher than average compared to other countries.

Average scores for U.S. students were higher than the scores for students in 22 jurisdictions and lower than the scores for students in 10 jurisdictions (about the same as the remainder of countries in the study).

Average scores for girls were higher than average scores for boys in the USA and all other jurisdictions, except for 2 jurisdictions where the boys and girls had no measureable differences.

The study was conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics from the U.S. Department of Education.

The rankings in the combined reading literacy score are:

Russian Federation (highest / best score)
Hong Kong
Canada, Alberta
Canada, British Columbia
Singapore
Luxembourg
Canada, Ontario
Hungary
Italy
Sweden
Germany
Belgium (Flemish)
Bulgaria
Netherlands
Denmark
Canada, Nova Scotia
Latvia
United States of America
England
Austria
Lithuania
Chinese Taipei

The lowest literacy scores came from:
South Africa (lowest)
Morocco
Kuwait
Qatar
Indonesia
Iran