WASHINGTON, D.C. – Data from a 2012 international student survey released this week shows American students are in the middle of the pack in regards to financial literacy when compared to their peers in other developed countries.

The 2012 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development study of 29,000 15-year-old boys and girls in 18 developed countries showed U.S. students ranked 9th in financial literacy, behind countries including Estonia, Czech Republic, Poland and Latvia, CBS reports.

The OECD study, also known as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), ranks countries in financial literacy as follows:

MORE NEWS: Know These Before Moving From Cyprus To The UK

1. Shanghai-China
2. Flemish Community (Belgium)
3. Estonia
4. Australia
5. New Zealand
6. Czech Republic
7. Poland
8. Latvia
9. United States
10. Russian Federation
11. France
12. Slovenia
13. Spain
14. Croatia
15. Israel
16. Slovak Republic
17. Italy
18. Columbia

The financial literacy results, unfortunately, are the silver lining to America’s PISA scores.

“U.S. performance in reading, math, and science has remained stagnant since 2009 as other nations have plowed ahead …” Education Week reports. “Nineteen countries and education systems scored higher than the United States in reading on the (2012 PISA), up from nine systems when the test was last administered in 2009.”

“In science, 22 education systems scored above the U.S. average, up from 18 in 2009,” the news site reports.

“While we are standing still, other countries are making progress,” Jack Buckley, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, told Education Week.

America’s continued slide into mediocrity comes despite decades of increased education spending, for which the U.S. ranks near the top. Much of the money, however, has went to cover automatic salary increases, pension payments, benefits and other perks for unionized teachers.

MORE NEWS: How to prepare for face-to-face classes

If anything, the results are a clear indication that increasing education spending doesn’t necessarily increase student achievement. They also indicate that the often-cited union excuse for poor student performance – poverty – can be overcome, as evidenced by scores in Hong Kong, Estonia, and Japan.

“The large differences between countries/economies in the context to which socioeconomic status influences learning outcomes suggests that it is possible to combine high performance with high levels of equity in education,” according to the report cited by Education Week.