US students score higher in math (AP)

A new study released Tuesday shows US students are making gains among their Asian counterparts in math since 1995 according to new international test score data. In an Associated Press wire story, while US students have made gains, Asian students still dominate overall in math and have made gains in science.

So what are they doing right and what are we doing wrong?

AP:

The findings contradict a persistent view in the United States that its children are lagging behind the rest of the developed world. An AP poll in June found that nearly two in five people believe American students do worse on math and science tests than those in most of the developed countries.

Not true, the authors of the report said.

"Certainly, our results do not show the United States trailing the developed world by any stretch of the imagination," said Ina V.S. Mullis, a Boston College research professor and co-director of the study.

"The Asian countries are way ahead of the rest of developed countries, but mostly the developed countries are relatively similar," Mullis said. "And the United States might be one of the leaders of that group, depending on whether you're talking about math or science in the fourth or the eighth grade."

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So what works and what doesn't? More quotes:

Outgoing Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said those findings show the need for the federal No Child Left Behind law. The 2002 law, which has become as unpopular as its champion, President George W. Bush, requires annual state tests and imposes penalties on schools that fail to make progress.

Spellings said the flat science scores, and gains by other countries, "remind us that we can't afford to be complacent."

"Now is not the time to retreat from rigorous accountability; instead, we must pick up the pace," Spellings said.

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Umm....no, madam secretary.

This kind of high stakes testing is NOT accountability. Holding a gun to our kids' heads to force them to pass a 3 hour exam, doing test prep sessions on how to pass these tests and spending classroom time on how to take these tests instead of teaching concepts so that our children can start being competitive in the global marketplace is foolish and bullheaded.

According to the AP story, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, or TIMSS, is widely used to measure the knowledge and skills of elementary and middle school students around the world. In 2007, 48 countries took part in eighth-grade tests, and 36 countries took part in fourth-grade tests. In all, 425,000 students were tested, the AP reports.

And certainly to ruffle feathers among those concerned with the achievement gap, more stunning data from the AP story:

In the U.S., black and Hispanic students still had lower math and science scores than white students, but the gap between them generally shrank since 1995, except for the gap in math scores between white and Hispanic fourth-graders, which didn't change. Closing this achievement gap is a federal priority.

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More Coverage:

*Click here for the AP story. Click here for a USA Today story.

*Click here for the Study homepage from the US Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics.

*Click here to try your hand and test your mathematics and science knowledge by completing a sample of some of the test items in the Dare to Compare challenge.

E.C. :)