What often gets overlooked is whether kids have a desk at home or a quiet place to study.
As researchers who focus on education policy and how students perform on standardized tests, we decided to take a closer look – on a global scale – at the degree to which students have desks at home and whether that’s linked to how well they do in school. To do this we turned to the Trends in Mathematics and Science Study, also known as TIMSS, an international assessment administered every four years by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, where one of us is the executive director.