Chestnut Hill, Mass. (12/5/2017) — Students in the Russian Federation and Singapore outshined their international peers in reading achievement at the fourth grade, according to results released today from PIRLS, a large-scale international assessment of 50 countries and 11 benchmarking regions. Other high performers included Hong Kong SAR, Ireland, Finland, Poland, and Northern Ireland, according to the assessment directed by Drs. Ina V.S. Mullis and Michael O. Martin at IEA’s TIMSS & PIRLS International Study Center at Boston College.