Archived: A First Look at What We Can Learn From High -Performing School Districts

A r c h i v e d I n f o r m a t i o n

A First Look at What We Can Learn From High Performing School Districts: An Analysis of TIMSS Data From the First in the World Consortium, August, 1999

Appendix B: FiW TIMSS Achievement Results

Exhibits B-1 through B-12 presents data on the average achievement of each country that participated in the different TIMSS assessments, as well as visual representations of the distribution of each country's scores.¹ The distribution show student achievement at the 5, 25^th, 75^th and 95^th percentiles. The dark black band in the middle of each country's distribution is the mean plus or minus two standard errors; this band is intended to emphasize the point that each country's average score in only an estimate of the true score.

The exhibits in this section should be interpreted with caution. Because these data were generated using statistical sampling procedures, the average scores are represented with their appropriate error bands. Therefore, average scores for countries overlap one another in many cases. Thus, it is incorrect to state that FiW ranked x out of y countries. Rather, countries have been grouped according to whether their scores are significantly above, not significantly different from, or significantly below the scores for the FiW. Nevertheless, as the data in these exhibits illustrate, there is considerable variation in scores both within and across countries.

Since the TIMSS assessment was administered, two school districts have not continued to participate in FiW activities (Wilmette School District #39 and Glencoe School District #35). The results reported here include students from these districts.

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¹Note that different groups of countries participated in each of the different assessments. See figure B-1 of Mullis, I.V.S., et al., Mathematics and Science Achievement in the Final Year of Secondary School for a summary of countries that participated in different assessments.

Exhibit B-1: Distribution of Mathematics Achievement in the Fourth Grade(51K)