Mathematics: Grades 1 and 5

Other, smaller international studies conducted over the past 10 years have found similar achievement trends among Asian and U.S. students. (Click here for footnote 13.) In studies of first and fifth grade students in Minneapolis, Minnesota; Sendai, Japan; and Taipei, Taiwan; (Click here for footnote 14.) U.S. students scored below their Japanese and Taiwanese peers in mathematics in 1980, 1984, and 1990 (Stevenson, Chen, and Lee 1993). (See figure 1-10.) The low levels of achievement in Minneapolis are of concern, because Minnesota students rank high among the States in mathematics achievement and Minnesota has the highest high school graduation rate in the country. Figure 1-10 illustrates the distribution of scores on the math test and includes comparisons between fifth grade Minneapolis students and students in Taipei (Taiwan), Sendai (Japan), and Szeged (Hungary).

Footnote 13:

These studies have generally taken specific steps to address the typical criticisms leveled against cross-national comparisons--e.g., that tests included items that students have not studied, or that student samples were not selected in identical ways across countries (Stevenson 1993).

Footnote 14:

These cities were selected as "prototypic metropolitan areas" because nationwide sampling was not feasible due to financial and logistic constraints. In each city, the researchers selected a representative sample of the city's schools.

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