Third International Math
and Science Study, 1995
American 12th grade boys did very poorly on all three of the TIMSS tests, scoring dead last in 17 of 34 TIMSS subjects in 1995. Their worst performance was in advanced math and physics, and this didn’t even include calculus which 65% of German students and 95% of Japanese students, compared to only 5% of our students, complete prior to high school graduation. For example, where 37% of all students and 60% of German students correctly answered Physics item 21, only 12% of American students did. American girls performed even worse, scoring lower than if they’d just guessed on more than a third of the questions. So their score of 442 in Wave Phenomena and 448 in Modern Physics represents LESS than zero skills, just as it does on the SAT test.
Compared to calculus, though, these physics questions were relatively simple, so it’s not too hard to imagine that we would have done even worse on a calculus test, and that our 12th grade girls would have scored even lower.
http://christianparty.net/timssphysics.xls
http://christianparty.net/timssboysgirlscorrect.xls
