A new report from the Brookings Institution discusses the latest U.S. student results for the Trends in International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). Forty-nine nations and nine benchmarking participants took part in the PIRLS, given in the fourth grade, and 63 nations and 14 benchmarking participants took part in the TIMSS, given in both fourth and eighth grades. American students did "reasonably well" in reading, math, and science, but perhaps more significant is how other countries -- for instance, Finland -- fared. On the 2011 TIMSS, Finland and the U.S. had statistically indistinguishable math scores for both grades, but Finland declined by 38 points from 1999 to 2011 -- one of the largest declines recorded by the TIMSS. Of the "A+ countries" -- Belgium, the Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, and Singapore (those scoring at the top of the 1995 TIMSS rankings in eighth-grade math) -- two had statistically significant gains, three had statistically significant losses, and one scored about the same. In all of this, author Tom Loveless stresses that causality is difficult to determine from cross-sectional data. Curriculum surely plays a role, but more work is needed to isolate curriculum effects in international data, and more testing of well-formulated hypotheses using longitudinal models. Ideally, randomized trials of the best curriculum programs could tease out unobserved influences on learning, such as cultural values regarding academic success, parenting practices that promote achievement, and peer status based on working hard at school.  More

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