Those countries were slightly behind the world's top five scoring countries of Singapore, Republic of Korea, Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, and Japan. A consortium is a group of districts that participate as a single entity. Approximately 50,000 students in the United States took the test as part of the benchmarking study. Students with access to high-quality instructional resources tend to score more highly in science. Michigan Invitational Group had only one country, Japan, and two districts indicating more emphasis on problem solving.
Students tend to score higher when there are fewer classroom interruptions.
The focus for the Michigan Invitational Group was a well documented curriculum, the use of well researched materials, usually NSF projects, active staff development, continual use of assessment data, and good communication with community. This group is composed of twenty-one heterogeneous schools across the state. The international average score in mathematics was 487. Michigan Invitational Group's average score was 532. The top scoring country was Singapore with 604.