Competitors Still Beat U.S. in Tests

American schoolchildren continue to lag behind those of major competitors in math and science exams given globally, despite progress on some of those tests, according to results from international achievement exams.

Students in Singapore, South Korea, Japan and Finland, among others nations, bested U.S. fourth- and eighth-grade students on the 2011 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, known as TIMSS. The nation's fourth-graders made some progress on the math exam since it last was given in 2007, but U.S. scores on the other exams were statistically unchanged. Despite that, U.S. students still outperformed the international averages and were among the top performers compared with the 60 countries and educational systems that administered the fourth-grade math and science tests and the 59 systems that gave the eighth-grade exams. U.S. students either placed in, or tied for, the top 13 spots on all those exams.