U.S. Students Fare Poorly in Comparison

In findings decried by President Clinton and a host of educators, America’s 12th-graders ranked in the lower third among 21 nations in tests measuring their knowledge of math and science, according to data released Tuesday.

The tests, given in the 1994-95 school year, also found that even this country’s top high school seniors--those taking advanced math and science courses--were outperformed by similar students in most other countries.

“There is no excuse for this,” Clinton said bluntly as he called upon Congress to join him in renewed efforts to improve the nation’s public education system.

“These results are entirely unacceptable,” added U.S. Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley, who cited a shortage of qualified teachers as one of the reasons for the poor showing by the U.S. students. As an example, he said a recent government survey found that about half of physics teachers lack a major or minor in that subject.

The new test data are the final installment of the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, billed as the most comprehensive international study of academic achievement ever.

Previous results found that U.S. fourth-graders did particularly well in science and were above average in math. Among eighth-graders, however, U.S. students did not fare nearly as well--they ranked in the middle of the pack in science and below the international average in math. The results for the three grades combined--in which American children do relatively well early on, begin to tail off and then do very poorly at the 12th-grade level--replicate the findings of earlier international comparisons.

Some U.S. educators were especially disturbed by the poor showing of the top echelon of this country’s high school seniors. “Our students in mathematics and science are simply not ‘world class.’ ” said William H. Schmidt, the Michigan State University professor who coordinated the study in the United States.

The new test results, he added, have burst what he termed a “myth” with which Americans have comforted themselves--”that our better students can compare with similar students in any country in the world.”

The previous test results played a key role in raising concerns about the quality of U.S. schools and contributed to the Clinton administration’s desire to mount a national testing effort to more closely measure how individual states and school districts do in math and reading against the international benchmarks. That effort, however, has been stymied in Congress.

The data released Tuesday showed that:

* In a 21-nation test of general high school math skills, U.S. 12th-graders ranked 19th, outperforming only Cyprus and lowest-ranking South Africa.

* In a similar 21-nation test of general high school science knowledge, United States 12th-graders ranked 16th, outperforming Italy, Hungary and Lithuania, in addition to Cyprus and South Africa.

* In a 16-nation test of advanced high school math students--those who took pre-calculus or calculus before the test or were enrolled in either course at that time--U.S. 12th-graders ranked 15th, outperforming only Austria.

* Advanced science students in the United States ranked last in a similar 16-nation physics test.

Seniors from the Netherlands ranked first in the general mathematics category, followed by seniors from Sweden, then Denmark. In the general sciences, Swedish seniors ranked first, followed by those from the Netherlands and Iceland.

Among the 16 nations that participated in the advanced math test, French seniors ranked first, followed by students from Russia, then Switzerland. And in the similar physics exam, Norwegian students ranked first, followed by seniors from Sweden and Russia.

None of the Asian nations that have finished at the top of the math and science tests given fourth- and eighth-graders participated in this one.

Clinton, in a speech to the National Council of Jewish Women, insisted it “is not inevitable that we have low scores on comparative exams,” especially given the strong performance by U.S. fourth-graders in the earlier tests. This indicates, he said, that the cause of the decline in comparative scores is due to instruction, not student abilities.

The president said the new results illustrate the need for various administration proposals, such as the voluntary national exams, recruitment of more teachers and “connecting every classroom and library to the Internet by the year 2000.”

Still, the role of the federal government in improving education is limited, given that the bulk of the money for public schools comes from state and local sources. Also, key policy decisions, such as curriculum requirements, are set at the state and local levels.

Riley said that along with poorly qualified teachers, unchallenging curricula at middle schools are part of the reason the U.S. students did not perform better in the math and science tests.

“Other nations begin to introduce challenging concepts, such as algebra, geometry, probability and statistics [at the middle-school level], but we continue to focus on arithmetic, even though our students are good at arithmetic,” he said. “So we shouldn’t be surprised that by the 12th grade, our students have fallen even further behind our counterparts abroad.”

About 10,000 U.S. seniors selected randomly from more than 200 public and private high schools nationwide took the international exam. In other nations, students from varying backgrounds and types of schools faced the same test.

Schultz reported from Washington, Colvin from Los Angeles.

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