Education (under construction)
In recent years, both in the United State and internationally, there has been a profusion of new statistics on education. The publication in 1983 of A Nation at Risk, called Americans' attention to the "mediocre educational performance" of in the nation's schools, particularly in comparison to the performance of students in other nations. The Report noted:
"International comparisons of student achievement, completed a decade ago, reveal that on 19 academic tests American students were never first or second and, in comparison with other industrialized nations, were last seven times."
International Comparisons of Academic Achievement
International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS)
- for math and science, fourth and eighth grades (1995, 1999, 2003, 2007).International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) ,
- fourth grade reading (2001, 2006).OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment (PISA);
-for reading, math and science at age 15 (2000, 2003 and 2006).
Note that in addition to the scholastic achievement data, the PISA datasets contains a information on school resources, school policies, the instructional climate of schools and student behaviour and attitudes.
Table 1: TIMMS Math Scores Figure 1: PISA 2003 Reading,
Science and Math (boxplot)data: spreadsheet | source data: spreadsheet (table 6.3)
References:
The National Commission on Excellence in Education (1983), A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform (A Report to the Nation and the Secretary of Education United States Department of Education) April. http://www.ed.gov/pubs/NatAtRisk/index.html
