Policy debates in education are greatly influenced by international differences in test scores. The presumption is that differences in test scores reflect differences in cognitive skills and content knowledge. We challenge this presumption by studying how much of the variation in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) scores is associated with student effort. We build a number of measures of student effort on the basis of both the PISA test and the student survey. Together, our measures of student effort explain between 32 and 38 percent of the variation in test scores across countries.

中文翻译：

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当学生不在乎时：重新审视成绩和学生努力方面的国际差异

教育方面的政策辩论在很大程度上取决于国际考试成绩的差异。前提是测试成绩的差异反映出认知技能和内容知识的差异。我们通过研究国际学生评估计划（PISA）分数的差异与学生的努力程度之间的关系来挑战这一假设。我们根据PISA考试和学生问卷调查建立了许多学生工作量度指标。总之，我们对学生努力程度的衡量标准可以解释各国考试成绩差异的32％至38％。