Math literacy in israel: What does pisa tell us that we did not know before?

This chapter focuses on Israeli students' performance in mathematical literacy as assessed by PISA. It discusses the PISA definition of mathematical literacy, and describes how it is assessed by PISA. The chapter then reviews the results of PISA assessment, showing low performance on all four mathematical content areas (quantity, space and shapes, change and relationships, and uncertainty and data), extremely large variations between and within schools, and difficulties in students' ability to handle certain mathematical processes. The general picture was not new to the Israel people, but the detailed analyses, the depth of the varia tions, and the very fact that Israel lagged so much behind the OECD average were not anticipated.