Re: American students do poorly in math and science

["Margaret Mazzolini" <mmazzolini@swin.edu.au>]

I've had a look at these, of course wanting to see the 
details on how Australia's kids went.  The tables are very odd though 
- have a look at the ones for Mathematics & Science literacy, and 
Advanced Mathematics.  Australia gets ranked below countries which 
appear to have lesser scores.

What's more, in the Physics table, the US is shown to be last (below 
Austria) - but the preamble above the table says that 
" The United States had significantly lower achievement than every
 country except Austria."

 The reason for these apparent errors  may be described in the full 
report, but my acrobat reader plug-in can't cope with it.  If these 
are errors though, it makes me wonder about the rest of the 
information in the tables (and the headlines on the report in our 
newspapers today)  ...

Cheers
Margaret

> 	The results (read them and weep) from the TIMSS can be found at:
>
> 	http://wwwcsteep.bc.edu/TIMSS1/HiLightC.html
>
> Mark
>
> Dr. Mark H. Shapiro
> Physics Department
> California State University, Fullerton
> P.O. Box 6866
> Fullerton, California 92834-6866
>
> Phone: ++ (714) 278-3884	PCS: ++ (714) 350-3575
> Fax:   ++ (714) 278-5810
> e-mail: mshapiro@fullerton.edu


Dr. Margaret Mazzolini
Astrophysics & Supercomputing Group
School of Biophysical Sciences and Electrical Engineering
Swinburne University of Technology
P.O. Box 218,
Hawthorn VIC 3122 Australia
email: mmazzolini@swin.edu.au
phone: (61 3) 9214 8084   fax:   (61 3) 9819 0856