Standards Help Minnesota Vie With Top Nations

This from Ed Week:

Thirteen years ago, Minnesota was a state with no academic standards in mathematics and science and what some observers said was a mixed record in grounding students in crucial academic content, such as number skills and algebra.

Since then, the state has set clear guidelines for schools in both subjects, and it also appears to have tuned up what gets taught in math classes. To state officials, the benefits are clear. As one of only two U.S. states to participate in a prominent international measurement of academic skill, Minnesota is scoring at or near the level of many of the highest-performing countries on that exam, and its scores in some categories have jumped significantly since it first took part in 1995.

The state's participation in the 1995 and 2007 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study has given researchers information to dissect the factors that yielded the state's impressive gains in some areas, particularly early-grades math...

See also: ("Pressure for International Benchmarks Builds," Jan. 7, 2009.)
(Minnesota's SciMath frameworks)

Math Gains Reported for U.S. Students

This from the New York Times:

American fourth- and eighth-grade students made solid achievement gains in math in recent years and in two states showed spectacular progress, an international survey of student achievement released on Tuesday found. Science performance was flat.

The results showed that several Asian countries continued to outperform the United States greatly in science and math, subjects that are crucial to economic competitiveness and research.

The survey, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, or Timss, found that fourth-grade students in Hong Kong and eighth-grade students in Taiwan were the world’s top scorers in math, while Singapore dominated in science at both grade levels...