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

What TIMSS Says About Equity Issues

The TIMSS data suggest that the enormous diversity of the U.S. educational system is not a reason or excuse for our low average performance. However, currently available analyses do raise questions about the practice of tracking students. TIMSS data will eventually enable us to address other equity issues. More detailed analyses relating to critical equity issues have yet to be done on the TIMSS data, including analyses that will shed light on comparative distributions of achievement and the relationship between poverty and achievement in the TIMSS nations. The United States is unique, for the first eight grades of schooling, in its practice of tracking students into different math and science courses or content based on past performance or perceptions of ability. Even a nation like Germany, which formally tracks students into different kinds of schools, still requires all students to study basically the same content; the main difference is how deeply they go into various subjects.

By 12th grade, many US. students have stopped taking mathematics and science altogether. Only 66 percent of U.S. graduating seniors were currently taking math, compared with an average of 79 percent in other TIMSS nations; the same trend was also apparent in science. Consequently, many U.S. students--including college-bound students--graduate without four years of secondary level math and science, and without exposure to physics, calculus, and other rigorous content that their international peers are getting (NCES, 1998).

[Using TIMSS to Benchmark State and Local Achievement]

[Using TIMSS Data to Inform Equity Issues]