More countries are ahead of the United States in math and science achievement, according to the latest results of an international test of 4th and 8th graders in those subjects.
The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, or TIMSS, reports the results of 4th grade students in 63 education systems and 8th grade students in 45 education systems, every four years. It also collects information on school programs, use of school technology, teacher preparation, and other measures of school context.
The 2023 administration, the first since the COVID pandemic, shows mixed results across the world. While some countries have experienced growth or stability in student achievement, others have experienced a decline, including the United States.
American students still score above the international average on the TIMSS, but they rank below children in top-performing countries, including Japan, Singapore and Korea.
Today, other countries that previously lagged behind the United States, such as Poland, Sweden, and Australia, have moved ahead of the country in some subjects and grade levels.
In math, scores for U.S. 4th graders fell 18 points after 2019, while scores for 8th graders fell 27 points, the biggest drop since the U.S. began participating in the test in 1995.
Science student achievement in 2023 is not significantly different from 2019, although 4th grade student achievement is now lower than in the first TIMSS administration.
In both subjects, the gaps between the highest and lowest performing students are widening.
These are “very steep declines,” Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which manages TIMSS in the United States, said Tuesday on a call with reporters. (The study is a project of the International Association for Educational Achievement in the Netherlands.)
“The progress of previous years has been erased,” Carr said.
The 2023 TIMSS administration is the latest in a series of national and international tests that have shown widespread declines in student achievement in the years following the pandemic.
But the declines in subjects, as well as the growing gap between the strongest and weakest students in the United States, are trends that predate recent years, Carr said.
“The fact that the United States is an outlier compared to other countries is particularly troubling,” Carr said, referring to the growing gaps. Between 2011 and 2019, the United States was the only country where score gaps between these two poles increased across the board, both grade levels and subjects, she said.
U.S. results show growing achievement gaps
TIMSS covers a wide range of math and science content in both grades.
In mathematics, 4th grade students are assessed on their number skills (knowledge of whole numbers, simple expressions and equations, as well as fractions and decimals), as well as their mathematics skills. measurement, geometry, reading and interpretation of data. The 8th grade test covers similar subjects at more advanced levels and incorporates algebra, a subject that many American students do not take until high school.
Eighth grade science covers biology, chemistry, physics and earth science. Fourth graders are tested on earth science, life science, and physical science.
The TIMSS scale ranges from 0 to 1,000 points, with thresholds at 400 for a “low” score, 475 for an “intermediate” score, 550 for a “high” score, and 625 for an “advanced” score.
Countries that historically score well on the test are “different from the United States on a number of dimensions,” Carr said. They are smaller, with more centralized education systems, and some have aligned their curriculum with TIMSS frameworks.
While this doesn’t “excuse” the U.S. results, Carr said, understanding these differences can provide context.
The lowest-scoring American 4th graders, those in the 10th percentile of test-takers, saw their scores drop significantly between 2019 and 2023: 37 points in math and 22 points in science.
But 90th percentile 4th graders showed no statistically significant difference in their scores in the two subjects.
The trend was different for 8th graders: both high- and low-achieving students lost ground in math. Scores at both ends of the distribution changed measurably in science.
The test also shows that more U.S. students are failing to reach the lowest level of achievement in math.
These findings are consistent with other large-scale assessments of U.S. students’ math abilities. The 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress found that after the pandemic, 38% of 8th graders could not achieve the lowest level on the test. In practice, this means that many of these students have difficulty using division, for example, or plotting a point on a number line.
The sobering results of that test showed that the progress American students made in math since the 1990s was virtually wiped out by the pandemic, even though it had begun to decline before 2020.
Experts have debated the reasons, and while there is little consensus on why, some frequently cited reasons include the rise of smartphones, changes in standards in the mid-2010s, and school closures related to a pandemic that have generally lasted longer in the United States than in the United States. in Asia or Europe.
TIMSS 2023 data also shows the return of an old trend: a gender gap in 8th grade achievement.
Since the test was first administered in 1995, 8th grade boys have outperformed girls in both subjects. This disparity disappeared in 2007 for mathematics, and for the first time in 2019 in science. But now it’s back.
American 8th grade boys scored 14 points higher in math than girls and 11 points higher in science.
These changes are consistent with changes in 8th grade students’ math scores on the NAEP, in which boys outperformed girls by two points in 2022 after the test reported no significant differences between girls and boys in 2019.