December 2007 — News
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U.S. Students Below Average in Science and Math
There was more of a gender difference in mean math scores across the board in math than in science, with males surpassing females by 11 points on average. In the United States, males outperformed females by nine points. The countries with the largest differences were all in favor of males, including Austria (23 point difference), Germany (20 points), and Italy (20 points). Of al of the OECD countries, only Iceland showed results in which females outperformed males in math by mean score, with a difference of four points.
With 1.3 percent of students achieving the top performance level in math, the United States was well behind the OECD average of 3.3 percent.
Reading performance was also measured as part of the study, but there were no data for the United States.
Analysis and Further details
While the report shows downward momentum in science and math for the United States in the rankings, this does not indicate a decline in scores for U.S. students. Instead, other countries have moved up, while the United States has remained virtually stagnant over the three-year period between this year's report and the previous report (2003). For some, however, it does indicate a decline in the ability of the United States to compete globally.
"Our students' performance today is the best indicator of America's global competitiveness tomorrow," said Raymond C. Scheppach of the National Governors' Association, in a statement released today. "The United States faces emerging challenges across the international marketplace. The countries that thrive in this new global, entrepreneurial, and knowledge-based economy will be those that have the most highly skilled and educated workforce."
Said Ray Romer, superintendent of Los Angeles Unified School District and former governor of Colorado, "These results reaffirm that America's education system is in crisis and that there are lasting implications for our children, who are unprepared to enter an increasingly competitive global marketplace," he says. "They underscore the need for the presidential candidates to show bold leadership, free from ideological constraints and the influence of special interests, to bring America out of this crisis back to a level competitive with top-performing countries."
However, others take issue with the report, specifically comparing a nation like the United States, in which many of those tested do not speak the native tongue as a first language, with countries like Finland, with a somewhat homogenous cultural makeup where language is not an issue.
Clifford Adelman, in an interview with the Christian Science Monitor today, said, "The question is how you account for that statistically. I'm comparing [the US] a country of 300-odd million people, a nation of immigrants, that is incredibly diverse with, in the example of Finland, a country of [just under] 6 million people."
