The OECD (the organization responsible for the international PISA exam) just released a new study on the state of international education.

Among the report’s many charts is one which shows the number of hours students are in school. The U.S. ranks quite high with roughly 90,000 compulsory instruction hours. In other words, U.S. students spend a lot more time in school compared to their international peers.

Now, one would think that more instruction time would naturally translate into better academic scores. To see if this was true, I took a peek at the 2012 PISA math scores to see if more time in school was helping U.S. students get ahead. Hardly.

Students in every country shown on the chart below (except for the U.S.) spend less than 80,000 hours in compulsory instruction. As mentioned above, the U.S. spends 90,000 hours on instruction time and is still at the bottom of the pile academically.

There are many factors which play into the math score a country receives. But might the U.S. be over-emphasizing instruction time?