Korean Students Rank Third in International Math and Science Comparison

Korean Students Rank Third in International Math and Science Comparison. November. 15, 2007 03:58. gold@donga.com.

South Korean students ranked 3rd in a global math and science comparison consisting of 8th graders from 43 countries.

The American Institute for Research, a non-profit organization in Washington, recently compared the math and science proficiencies of American 8th graders from 49 states and Washington, D.C. with those of their international counterparts.

The study describes state and international education indicators for mathematics and science using state data collected by the 2005 and 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and international data collected by the 2003 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) on 8th grade students. Data from the two studies, based on groups of 100 excellent students, were reanalyzed and expressed in the same metric through statistical linking.

Singapore topped the lists in both areas, and other Asian countries also stood out. In mathematics, 73% of Singaporean students earned the “Proficient level” status, followed by 66% of Hong Kong students, 65% of Korean students, 61% of Taiwanese students, and 57% of Japanese students.

Singapore also earned the first place in science, with 55% of its students ranked at the “Proficient level,” followed by Taiwan (52%), Korea (45%), Hong Kong (44%), and Japan (42%).

American students ranked 10th in math and 12th in science. Most European students, including those of the Netherlands, Hungary, Estonia, and Russia, were ranked “Average.”