Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Math Gains Reported for U.S. Students

This from the New York Times:

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...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think the reason why different countries differ in academics because of cultural differences. America has a whole range of different cultures meshed together and developed their own way of living. There is nothing wrong with different living styles it’s just the priorities are different. In America we want to “be all you can be” while still trying to live a happy lifestyle. In Asia education is everything and can be very stressful to students. They have study buildings they go to after school and have many tutors for various subjects. America’s culture allows people to be more creative whereas Asian cultures are more about logic and accuracy.