December 2007 — News
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U.S. Students Below Average in Science and Math
Validating the long-standing theme in science and math education, the results of the 2006 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) were released Dec. 4 by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), showing that in math and science students in the United States are lagging behind most of their counterparts in other countries. The results of this latest research place the United States 25th out of 30 OECD countries in math achievement among 15-year-olds and 21st in science achievement.
The Numbers: Science and Math
The complete report, comprising more than 700 pages of data and analysis on 15-year-old students in 57 countries total, revealed a mean score of 489 in performance on the science scale for U.S. students, placing it 11 points below the OECD average. Finland took the top slot on the scale by a wide margin, with a mean score of 563. The top-5 slots were rounded out by Canada (534), Japan (531), New Zealand (530), and Australia (527).
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Interestingly, and perhaps counter-intuitively, the United States was one of two OECD countries in which males and females received identical mean scores on the science scale. (The other was Australia.) The biggest gender differences were in Turkey, where females outscored males by 12 points; Greece, where females outscored males by 11 points; and the U.K., where males outscored females by 10 points.
Also worth noting is that the United States, well below average overall in science, was nevertheless slightly above average in the percentage of students achieving the highest level of proficiency in science ("Level 6")--(1.5 percent versus the average of 1.3 percent. It was beaten out by 10 other countries in this regard, including New Zealand, in which a full 4 percent of students achieved top-level proficiency, Finland (3.9 percent), the U.K. (2.9 percent), Australia (2.8 percent), Italy (2.6 percent), Japan (2.6 percent), Canada (2.4 percent), Germany (1.8 percent), Czech Republic (1.8 percent), and the Netherlands (1.7 percent). In the United States, males barely edged out females in the percentage of students achieving top science proficiency (1.6 percent versus 1.5 percent). Males also had far more at the lowest achievement level (8.3 percent versus 6.8 percent below "Level 1").
On the mathematics scale, the United States fared worse, coming in at No. 25 among OECD countries at a mean score of 474--again well below the average of OECD countries (498). Fifteen of these OECD countries scored higher than 500, with Finland narrowly edging out Korea for the top position (548 versus 547).
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