U.S. Students Slide In Global Ranking On Math, Reading, Science : The Two-Way : NPR

U.S. Students Slide In Global Ranking On Math, Reading, Science : The Two-Way : NPR:

U.S. Students Slide In Global Ranking On Math, Reading, Science

 American 15-year-olds continue to turn in flat results in a test that measures students' proficiency in reading, math and science worldwide, failing to crack the global top 20.

The Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, collects test results from 65 countries for its rankings, which come out every three years. The latest results, from 2012, show that U.S. students ranked below average in math among the world's most-developed countries. They were close to average in science and reading.

"In mathematics, 29 nations and other jurisdictions outperformed the United States by a statistically significant margin, up from 23 three years ago," reportsEducation Week. "In science, 22 education systems scored above the U.S. average, up from 18 in 2009."

In reading, 19 other locales scored higher than U.S. students — a jump from nine in 2009, when the last assessment was performed.

The top overall scores came from Shanghai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Macao and Japan, followed by Lichtenstein, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Estonia.

The math scores of students in Shanghai showed that they are "the equivalent of over two years of formal schooling ahead of those observed in Massachusetts, itself a strong-performing U.S. state," according to the study.

The U.S. was slotted between the Slovak Republic and Lithuania in the overall results, two spots behind Russia. But the PISA assessment notes that there are few statistical differences between the scores of the U.S. and those countries.

A graphic released with the 2012 PISA results shows the annualized change in performance in average math scores between 2003 and 2012. The chart includes only nations that have comparable data from both 2003 and 2012.

PISA

American Education Secretary Arne Duncan called the PISA findings a "picture of educational stagnation." He told The Associated Press that America needs to "invest in early education, raise academic standards, make college affordable, and do more to recruit and retain top-notch educators."

From the PISA assessment:

"Students in the U.S. are largely satisfied with their school and view teacher-student relations positively. But they do not report strong motivation towards learning mathematics: only 50 percent [of] students agreed that they are interested in learning mathematics, slightly below the OECD average of 53 percent."

Here's how NPR's Claudio Sanchez describes the situation for a report on Tuesday'sMorning Edition:

"Remember the movie Groundhog Day, where the main character wakes up every morning and realizes nothing has changed? He's reliving the same day over and over again. Well that pretty much sums up the latest PISA results for 15-year-olds in the U.S. Their scores in reading, math and science have not changed since 2003."

That means teenagers in places such as Vietnam have outpaced their American counterparts in their average scores in math and science. Students in Ireland and Poland did better than the U.S. in all three subjects measured.

Claudio talked to Harvard professor Jan Rivkin, who co-chairs a project on U.S. competitiveness.

"While our scores in reading are the same as 2009, scores from Belgium, Estonia, Germany, Ireland, Poland and others have improved and now surpass ours," Rivkin says. "Other countries that were behind us, like Italy and Portugal, are now catching up. We are in a race in the global economy. The problem is not that we're slowing U.S. Students Slide In Global Ranking On Math, Reading, Science : The Two-Way : NPR: