The ISA scale for scientific literacy is based on a long-standing scale developed for the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development's (OECD's) Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). When you read of countries being compared every three years in terms of the scientific literacy of their students, this is based on PISA test data; thus we are able with this Science ISA (within the limitations of the data) to be able to compare our students to international scientific literacy levels. Based on this PISA data, AIS tenth graders exiting the MYP program outperform the highest performing worldwide test takers that are located in Shanghai based Chinese schools by 16%, and the second highest test takers in Finland by 21%. They outperform USA national scores by 34%.
The test assesses whether students are able to use their knowledge of, and about science effectively to identify problems, acquire new knowledge, offer explanations, and draw evidence-based conclusions. The knowledge to be assessed is selected from the major fields of physics, chemistry, biology and earth and space sciences with the aim of including situations of relevance to real-life, or that represent important scientific concepts or theories.