They Test... They Score!

From the currently-underutilized (and soon to be right-sized) Department of Good News:

December 10, 2008

Math Gains Reported for U.S. Students

By SAM DILLON

American fourth- and eighth-grade students made solid achievement gains in math in recent years and in two states showed spectacular progress, an international survey of student achievement released on Tuesday found. Science performance was flat.

The results showed that several Asian countries continued to outperform the United States greatly in science and math, subjects that are crucial to economic competitiveness and research.

The survey, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, or Timss, found that fourth-grade students in Hong Kong and eighth-grade students in Taiwan were the world’s top scorers in math, while Singapore dominated in science at both grade levels.

“We were pleased to see improvements in math, and wished we’d seen more in science,” said Stuart Kerachsky, acting commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics at the Education Department, which carried out an analysis of the performance of American students on the test.

The latest Timss study, the world’s largest review of math and science achievement, involved testing a representative sample of students in each country in 2007, the first time the tests had been administered since 2003. The results included fourth-grade scores from 36 countries and eighth-grade scores from 48 countries. The tests cover subjects taught in all the participating countries, including algebra, chemistry, geometry and physics.

Here are links to the Timss site, the 2007 study, and an overview.

HMM:  No graceful way to present this occurs to me, but away I go.  The US data is broken down by gender and race.  For the gender data we would want variances as well as means but I am not finding that.  However, the racial breakdown within the US is available on page 23 of the report (p. 35 of the .pdf).  That can be compared with the country scores available on p. 7 (p. 19 .pdf).

So - US fourth-graders averaged 529 but the Asian sub-group had an average score of 582.  If they were a separate country, that would have placed them third, trailing only Hong Kong and Singapore and edging Japan.  Smoke that.

By eighth grade we seemed to have beaten our Asian students into better compliance - their sub-group score is 549, versus a US average 0f 508.  As a separate country that would rank behind Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan (at 570) but crush such wanna-bes as Hungary and England at 517 and 513 respectively.

I suspect that says something about US schools and racial/cultural differences in learning, but what?  If Asian kids do roughly as well here as in Asian schools, does that mean:

(a) US schools are not a shambles;

(b) the sort of US school in which an Asian family will enroll their kids is not a shambles;

(c) the US schools are only part of the story and this test is detecting a strong Asian cultural influence emphasizing education;

(d) some of the above.

SINCE YOU ASKED:  US white kids had an average score of 550 in fourth grade and 533 in eighth grade.  As a separate country the fourth graders lose only to Asians (Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and Japan) while edging Kazakhstan.  The eighth graders lose to the same four Asian countries plus Korea (which does not appear in the fourth grade rankings), while trouncing Old and New Europe.

Which suggests that the problem with US education is in large part a  problem with our inner-city schools.  Who could have guessed?

BUT DO KEEP IN MIND:  Presumably other countries also have their problems running a school system.  Beating Hungary and the Russian Federation should not be our only benchmark.  That said, hand-wringers explaining that US scores are low because too many suburban kids are working a job to pay for their car would seem, at a glance, to be misdirected.

 

Comments

[Daddy]

Read Charles Murray's "Real Education" last month. In one section he mentioned the decline in American students scores on the Math portion of the SAT since the sixties, but then starting in the 80's, there was a slight bump in the decline in math, but not in verbal. Since Murray was talking about only very, very small numbers of students neccessary for this slight math score uptick, (Such as just a handful getting perfect SAT math scores to swing the curve) it immediately struck me that a possible solution for that bump was the influx of Post Vietnam Asians, primarily the Boatpeople. I did an 18 month stint in the mid-late 80's as a Military Recruiter for Officers. I had access to and was well familiar with SAT scores and college transcripts of Science Majors throughout Alaska, Montana, Idaho and Washington State. It seemed that about half of every transcript reflecting a 3.6 or higher in math or physics had a name like Nyguyen or Cao or Bao attached to it. It became sort of a joke in the business, so that if you got one that wasn't a Vietnamese kid, you were humerously shocked. Unfortunately, since they were first generation immigrants, their English skills were generally very weak, oftentimes so weak as to prevent me doing much with them.

This also jibed with the AQT/FAR miliary test that we administered in the office or in the field and that we shared with the Corps; plenty of outstanding Vietnamese kids with outstanding math scores but very weak English comprehension abilities.

At least in this country anyway, I think the influx of new Asian immigrants, restricted by language inadequacies to the hard sciences, and pushed by immigrant parents to achieve excellent in those hard sciences, is what is responsible for Murrays's noted uptick. I think that somewhat applies to this story you linked TM.

[Crunchy Frog]

I'm sure the much-hated No Child Left Behind Act had absolutely nothing to do with the increase.

[Daddy]

I also don't think we should forget the new private math courses available to interested parents as alternatives or aditives to public education. For instance, my two, (a 10 and a 12 year old) have been enrolled in Kumon Math programs since they were 3. Kumon is an extracurricular Japanese program which evaluates your kids math ability, and thereafter, by continuous daily math problem repition, builds the kids confidence and understanding of mathmatics, all the way up through calculus. My kids in Kumon are 2 grades above their public school levels and breezing along. We have 3 Kumon Centers in Anchorage alone and already it is essentially a waiting list to get in. If we are doing that in hicksville Alaska, I would suspect that it or similar programs are going on big time in the lower 48, and again might be responsible for recent slight mprovements in National math scores among younger kids.