America's 15-year-olds put in an average performance on reading, science and math literacy tests compared to their peers in other highly industrialized countries. What this means is that the performance of U.S. 10th-graders places them behind 15-year-olds in 14 other countries in reading literacy, behind 13 countries in scientific literacy and behind 18 others in math literacy.

The comparisons come from a new Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) survey of 265,000 high school students in 32 countries. The survey, which is called the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), is designed to capture the abilities of students from the world's most industrialized countries to apply learning in a real-world context. This is the first year of the survey, which the OECD hopes to conduct every three years with the goal of helping countries shape their educational policymaking. The National Center of Education Statistics administers the survey for the United States.

U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige was not happy with the results. "Unfortunately, we are average across the board compared to other industrialized nations. In the global economy, these countries are our competitors--average is not good enough for American kids."

The countries that show the highest level of achievement are Finland, Canada, Japan and Korea.

The survey differs from other national performance tests in that its emphasis is on real-world skills, not academic mastery. It tests learning that takes place both in and out of school. And it seeks information about the cultural environment of students and their attitudes about learning as well as about their socioeconomic backgrounds.

Questions are designed to measure how well students understand the materials of independent life--bank forms, government documents, maps, newspaper articles and editorials, for example.

One reason for the mediocre performance of U.S. students is the large gap between those who score at the bottom and those who score at the top of the scale. The PISA confirms other national tests showing gaps in performance between racial and ethnic groups. One gender difference of note is that 15-year-old girls in every country outperform boys in reading literacy. In the U.S., however, girls and boys perform on a par in math and science literacy.

The survey results are available online at http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/pisa/.

NAEP science scores show no gains

The good news about students' improving performance in a range of academic subjects doesn't extend to science, according to results of the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). Also known as "the nation's report card," the NAEP science 2000 results released in November showed that the average scores of fourth- and eighth-graders were basically unchanged from the last assessment in 1996, while the 12th-graders' scores actually declined. (The science results contrast unfavorably with the 2000 NAEP math results, in which students in fourth and eighth grade registered significant improvements.)

In addition to numerical scores, NAEP also reports the number of students reaching basic, proficient or advanced achievement levels. While about two-thirds of U.S. students have a basic understanding of science, the scores show much lower levels reaching the proficient level: 29 percent of fourth-graders, 32 percent of eighth-graders and 18 percent of 12th-graders.

Secretary of Education Rod Paige expressed particular concern about the downward trend as students move through high school. "If our graduates know less about science than their predecessors four years ago, then our hopes for a strong 21st-century work force are dimming just when we need them most," he said.

NAEP also includes information on course taking, television viewing habits, and teacher qualifications as well as the relationship among these factors and student performance. Some of those results are noteworthy, if not especially surprising. For example, eighth-graders whose teachers majored in science scored higher than students whose teachers lacked a science major. (No teacher data were collected for 12th grade because many students don't take science in their senior year.) In addition, students who took tougher courses, such as biology, chemistry and physics, outscored their peers in general science or life science classes. And prolonged TV viewing (six hours or more per school day) was associated with lower test scores than those of students who watched less TV.

In the press conference announcing the science results, Secretary Paige highlighted the impressive performance of students in Department of Defense (DOD) schools, at home and abroad. (The AFT represents many teachers in DOD's overseas schools.) DOD students are a diverse group--40 percent are minority, 50 percent receive free or reduced-price lunch, 80 percent have parents who didn't attend college--yet they scored higher than students in all but one state at the eighth-grade level and improved significantly from the last assessment. Paige's explanation for the DOD success echoes some of what the AFT has been advocating for all schools for a long time. "The answer is startlingly simple and familiar," Paige said, "they set high standards, they demand accountability, and they encourage parental involvement."

More information on "The Nation's Report Card: Science 2000" is available online at www.ed.gov.