U.S. students continue to trail Asian students in math, reading, science - The Washington Post: Students across the United States have made some gains but continue to lag behind many of their Asian counterparts in reading, math and science, according to the results of two international tests released Tuesday.
U.S. fourth-graders’ math and reading scores improved since the last time students took the tests several years ago, while eighth-graders remained stable in math and science. Americans outperformed the international average in all three subjects but remained far behind students in such places as Singapore and Hong Kong, especially in math and science.
Jack Buckley, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, said the results leave him “optimistic” about the United States’ performance, particularly given that many higher-
performing nations do not deal with the same wide range of student and family income, backgrounds and language ability.
