International Comparisons of Achievement

Elementary- and secondary-age students in many industrialized Asian and European nations have consistently outperformed their U.S. peers in international mathematics and science tests. Despite the various data-related weaknesses that limit these international comparisons (Medrich and Griffith 1992), the results suggest that-at best-U.S. student performance on these tests has been relatively mediocre. Poor sample quality and student selectivity alone cannot explain the superior performances demonstrated by students in some countries (Bradburn, as cited in Rothman 1992). The consistency of the international findings, along with the magnitude of the differences in scores between the highest achieving countries and the United States, "suggests that there is an important underlying theme of lagging U.S. performance" (Medrich and Griffith 1992).

The 1981 Second International Mathematics Study (SIMS) and 1984 Second International Science Study (SISS), which measured mathematics achievement among 13-year-olds and science achievement among 10- and 14-year-olds, indicated large differences in the mean scores between the United States and the top-scoring countries. These studies also measured the mathematics and science achievement of students in their last year of secondary school; however, "meaningful comparisons of achievement are especially difficult for this group" (McKnight et al. 1989, p. 27) due to the sampling and selectivity problems that plague cross-national studies of the achievement of older students. Nevertheless, the relatively low performance of U.S. students was consistent across subject areas and age groups in both the SIMS and SISS; this was in keeping with the findings of the International Assessment of Educational Progress (Lapointe, Askew, and Mead 1992a) that was conducted among students representing a different set of countries and age groups.

IAEP 1991 Comparisons

Mathematics: Grades 1 and 5

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