TESTING Results promising for eighth-graders

Some countries continue to outperform the United States in math and science.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- U.S. eighth-graders are gaining on their peers across the globe in science and math, but fourth-graders are being passed as their test scores remain stagnant, according to an international review of school performance.
The 2003 test results released Tuesday offer some hope and relief to the United States, coming just a week after its 15-year-olds did poorly in math in another prominent comparison.
The achievement gap between black and white children is shrinking, the new scores show, a central goal of the government's education policies under President Bush.
Outperformed
Yet several countries, particularly in Asia, continue to outperform the United States in science and math, fields at the heart of research, innovation and economic competitiveness.
Given this country's recent emphasis on achievement in the early grades, the flat performance by fourth-graders drew concern, and some playing down, from U.S. officials.
The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, or TIMSS, is a test of curriculum taught in all participating countries, from chemistry and physics to geometry and algebra. It is a respected benchmark of a country's performance in primary and middle grades.
"It's really the only way we have to determine how the United States as a nation is doing in preparing its children and its students in math and science," said Russ Whitehurst, director of the Institute of Education Sciences at the Education Department.
Federal officials also suggested Tuesday that a better measure of U.S. achievement would be how pupils do on the test known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress. On that U.S. test, more closely aligned to standards and content taught in schools here, fourth-graders and eighth-graders made sizable gains at every level in math in 2003.
In the new study, the United States is compared with other industrialized countries and many poorer ones. Given that range, the United States was above average across the board.
Forty-five countries took part at eighth grade and 25 countries at fourth grade when representative samples of pupils took the test. Among major findings for the U.S. pupils:
*Eighth-graders improved their scores in science and math since 1995, when the test first was given. While the science progress has come largely since the last test, in 1999, the math rise came mainly between 1995 and 1999 and not in recent years. The rising scores of eighth-graders also gave the United States a higher ranking relative to other countries.
*Fourth-graders did not improve or decline in science or math since 1995, and as a result, they slipped in the international rankings as other countries made gains.
*In both grades and both subjects, black pupils closed their test-score gap with whites. Hispanic pupils also closed the learning gap with whites in eighth-grade science.
Donald Thompson, an education leader at the National Science Foundation, said schools have made noticeable gains in eighth-grade algebra since the last version of the test. "When concentrated attention is brought to bear on the nation's education problems, our school systems have the capacity to take action and to get extremely positive results," he said.