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Appendix. International Assessments of STEM Achievement in the Twentieth Century
- Johns Hopkins University Press
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Appendix International Assessments of STEM Achievement in the Twentieth Century assessments in the 1960s and 1970s Has the achievement of American students declined during the past 40 years, or have they always scored poorly? Findings from the original surveys by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), for which planning began in 1966, are revealing. A 12-country feasibility study had been conducted in 1962, and a study of mathematical achievement in 12 countries was published in 1967.1 The results of the mathematics achievement testing done in the 1965 international assessment are summarized in table A.1. Out of 70 questions U.S. math students got an average of 13.8 questions correct, considerably below the nearest score among the other countries in the study (Australia, whose students averaged 21.6 correct answers). Three areas—science, literature, and reading comprehension—were studied between 1970 and 1972 (with reports published in 1973); three more areas—English, French as a foreign language, and civic education—were studied in 1974 and 1975. Nineteen countries participated in the science study, although data from Chile, India , Iran, and Thailand were analyzed separately from data from the developed countries. In 1976, David Walker published a volume summarizing the results from all six subject surveys, which were conducted in 21 countries. One year later, Richard Wolf published a report about the IEA results as they related specifically to the United States.2 The results from the science tests showed American students faring worse as they grew older. Among 10-year-olds, the youngest students, the United States did reasonably well. The mean score of 17.7 placed it 4th out of the 12 developed countries from which scores were obtained. Among 14-year-olds, the United States ranked 7th out of the 14 developed countries that reported data. However, by the senior year of high school, the United States was in last place in science. In fact, the 210 a p p e n d i x U.S. score was not substantially higher than that achieved by Thailand, one of the developing countries. The United States also ranked last in the grand total score, which included some extra advanced questions.3 Even 40 years ago, American high school seniors were performing dismally on international science achievement tests. Today’s low scores probably do not represent a substantial decline in the quality of American schools. What happens if we compare the best U.S. students in these assessments from the early 1970s with the best students from other countries? Mean scores for each country were produced for the top 1 and 5 percent of high school seniors. Looking at the top 1 percent of each country’s students, the United States no longer places last, but rather 9th out of 14. Looking at the top 5 percent, the United States places 8th. In short, when we control the bias introduced by the differing percentages of students studying science in various countries, American high school seniors move from last place to the middle of the pack. Field testing in the six subject surveys conducted in the early 1970s involved 258,000 students, 50,000 teachers, and 9,700 schools. Why, one might ask, did the researchers embark on such a venture? “We conceived of the world as one big educational laboratory where a great variety of practices in terms of school structure and curricula were tried out. We simply wanted to take advantage of the international variability with regard both to the outcomes of the educational systems and the factors which caused differences in those outcomes.”4 This pioneering IEA report on science education in 19 countries took place table a.1 Results of the 1965 international mathematics assessment Mean scorea Country Math students Non-math students Australia 21.6 Belgium 34.6 24.2 England 35.2 21.4 France 33.4 26.2 Germany 28.8 27.7 Israel 36.4 Japan 31.4 25.3 The Netherlands 31.9 24.7 Scotland 25.5 20.7 Sweden 27.3 12.6 United States 13.8 8.3 Source: T. Husen, ed., International Study of Achievement in Mathematics (New York: John Wiley, 1967), p. 24. a Score is given as an average number of correct responses on a 70-item test. [54.226.126.38] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 20:14 GMT) i n t e r n a t i o n a l a s s...