Study: U.S. kids gain in math scores

WASHINGTON (AP) — American schoolchildren do better than people think in math and science, but Asian students still dominate in math and have gained ground in science, an international study found.

Kids in the U.S. made significant gains in math since 1995 and score above average on international fourth- and eighth-grade tests in the subject, according to a study released Tuesday.

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 pupils 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.”

Kids in Massachusetts and Minnesota did even better than the U.S. overall. In fact, Massachusetts pupils did as well as some of their Asian peers. Those two states took part in the study separately.

The United States has a long way to go to lead the world in math. The study reported dramatically higher math scores in five Asian countries — Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan and Korea — than other countries participating in the study.

The top-performing Asian countries also had the biggest share of pupils reaching advanced benchmarks that represent fluency in the most complex topics and reasoning skills.

For the U.S., the news in another area isn’t as good: Kids still do slightly better in science than math and are well above average, but scores have stagnated since 1995. In the meantime, other countries, including Singapore and Hong Kong, have made significant gains and surpassed the U.S.

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.

Conducted every four years, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, or TIMSS, is widely used to measure the knowledge and skills of elementary and middle school pupils 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 pupils were tested.

The study compares the United States with other rich, industrialized countries as well as many poorer nations. Scores in the U.S. were above the international average in each subject and grade.

Some believe the study gives too rosy a view of the U.S. by including poorer countries. Compare the U.S. to similarly rich countries, and its performance drops to the middle of the pack, said Andrew Coulson of the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute.