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Competing as a state against whole countries, Bay State eighth graders have tied with Singapore for first place in science in a worldwide test of math and science aptitude in fourth and eighth grades in which Massachusetts students fared well overall.
In addition to leading the eighth-grade science category in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, commonwealth students placed second (behind Singapore) in fourth-grade science, third in fourth-grade math and sixth in eighth-grade math.
The test was administered in April and May 2007 to 3,600 students attending 95 randomly selected schools in Massachusetts.
Chris Anderson, Massachusetts High Technology Council president, and former chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Education, said the improvement in performance from 1999 was an endorsement of the state’s education policies. “Today’s TIMSS results show that Massachusetts students and teachers can match up with world’s best in math and science,” Anderson said.
In 2006, Massachusetts decided to benchmark Bay State math and science student performance against international students. The Massachusetts Board of Education voted to require Massachusetts schools to participate in the TIMSS, administered by Boston College. The yearlong study measures achievement levels of fourth- and eighth-grade math and science students worldwide. By participating in the study, Massachusetts hopes to track its progress and improve its 2003 No. 15 ranking for eighth-grade math students, behind top-ranked Singapore.
Eighth-grade U.S. students ranked No. 15 behind top-ranked Singapore in math, according to a 2003 TIMSS study of 46 countries, which included the state of Indiana. In addition, eighth-grade U.S. science students ranked No. 9 behind countries such as Japan, Korea and the Netherlands.
TIMSS was developed by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement in Amsterdam to measure trends in students’ math and science performance worldwide. In all, 59 countries and 425,000 students participated in the 2007 TIMSS administration. Massachusetts and Minnesota were the only two states choosing to participate as nations unto themselves.
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