The civic achievement of students in all 28 countries was measured by a total civic knowledge scale composed of two subscales: a civic content subscale and a civic skills subscale. Civic content refers to knowledge of content, such as characteristics of democracies, and civic skills refer to the interpretative skills needed to understand civic-related information (e.g., the skills needed to make sense of a newspaper article or a political cartoon).

• U.S. ninth-graders scored significantly above the international average on the total civic knowledge scale. Furthermore, in no other country did students significantly outperform U.S. students (figure 2).
• U.S. students' average scores on the civic content subscale did not differ significantly from the international mean. Students in six countries performed better than U.S. students on this subscale (figure 2).
• U.S. students performed significantly higher than the international mean on the civic skills subscale and also performed significantly higher than students in every other country participating in CivEd (figure 2).
• Overall, the results indicate that ninth-grade U.S. students performed well when compared with students in the other 27 participating countries.