Math and Science Achievement
International Comparisons
According to the Third International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) released by the Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), U.S. twelfth graders outperformed only two (Cyprus and South Africa) of the 21 participating countries in math and science. Asian countries chose not to participate in the TIMSS twelfth-grade study.U.S. students’ scores in science were not significantly differentfrom those of seven other countries, including Italy, Germany,France, and the Russian Federation; in math, their scores weresimilar to those of four other countries, including Italy andthe Russian Federation.TIMSS also examined how U.S. advanced twelfth-grade students — in math, those studying pre-calculus…
