Lawrence C. Stedman

International Achievement Differences: An Assessment of a New Perspective

In recent years, a new perspective has challenged the conventional wisdom that U.S. students do poorly in international assessments. It holds that sampling biases and a different curricular arrangement have made U.S. achievement appear low and that a focus on rankings has masked what are really small achievement differences among countries. To assess this perspective, I review evidence from the major international assessments of the past two decades, including the recent Third International Math and Science Study (TIMSS). I argue for a middle ground. U.S. performance has not been consistently poor, but varies by subject and grade. Ranks sometimes have exaggerated differences, but even developed countries often differ greatly in achievement. Contrary to a common misconception, the assessments have not unfairly compared the mass of U.S. students to small academic elites in other countries. Our poor math performance is not a simple matter of selection bias or course sequencing, but also reflects real deficiencies in curricular focus and teaching. These have been linked to our assembly-line cultural conception of knowledge and schooling. To ground the international findings, I summarize evidence on domestic indicators. Although trends have been generally stable, U.S. student achievement has been weak for several decades. Fundamental school reform is warranted.

Incomplete Explanations: The Case of U.S. Performance in the International Assessments of Education

In the past few years, it has been argued that the international assessments are seriously flawed by sampling and test bias and that conclusions about U.S. educational inferiority are unwarranted. Alternatively, it has been argued that the differences in national performances are related to cultural differences, institutional arrangements such as curriculum and length of the school year, and ineffective pedagogy. To clarify these issues, I review the history of the assessments and evaluate the major explanations of the achievement differences. I examine, in depth, the theoretical and empirical underpinnings of curriculum-centered explanations because of their relevance to school reform (Westbury, 1992, 1993).

The Sandia Report and U.S. Achievement: An Assessment

Abstract The author assesses the Sandia Report, a controversial analysis of U.S. education by the Sandia National Laboratories that challenges popular views of an educational decline. The report, titled “Perspectives on Education in America”, was finally made public in the May/June 1993 issue of The Journal of Educational Research (Carson, Huelskamp, & Woodall, 1993). The assessment focuses on the Sandia Reports contentions about K through 12 performance, specifically the SAT decline, NAEP achievement, and the international assessments. The author concludes that the report is generally right about steady trends, but that it is seriously flawed by errors in analysis, insufficient evidence, mischarac-terizations of the international data, and a failure to consider the evidence that U.S students are performing at low levels. In spite of its findings, fundamental school reform is still warranted.