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

Executive Summary

The Third International Mathematics and Science Study is a rigorous research effort that examined student performance in 41 nations at 3 grade levels. Unlike past international studies, TIMSS not only shows how well U.S. students perform compared with their international peers, but also analyzes curriculum and teaching practices in various countries to explain why our students perform as they do. TIMSS includes the following messages about education reform and future education policy:

• We need to make dramatic improvements in student achievement, especially in middle schools and high schools. U.S. students don't start out behind; they fall behind. U.S. fourth-grade students are among the very best in the world in science and above the international average in math. But by high school our students score near the bottom of TIMSS nations in both subjects--alarming news for a nation that wants to remain a world economic leader.

• The U.S. math and science curriculum lacks rigor, focus, and coherence. According to TIMSS, many middle school students in the United States are still doing elementary arithmetic and introductory science while their international counterparts are studying algebra, geometry, physics, and chemistry. By the senior year of high school, many of our students have stopped taking math and science altogether. And while other countries focus on a limited number of critical topics, curriculum in the United States emphasizes breadth over depth, providing students with superficial exposure to many topics but mastery of none.

• U.S. teachers demand less high-level thought of their math students than teachers in Germany and Japan. TIMSS videotapes of real classrooms show how differently math is taught in these three countries. The main goal in the United States is to teach students how to do various procedures, while in both Japan and Germany teachers are much more likely to develop concepts and procedures rather that merely state them, resulting in what experts describe as higher quality teaching in those countries than in the United States.

• Unlike in Japan, in the United States education reformers try to change teaching through indirect means, rather than by focusing on improving the quality of classroom lessons. In Japan, classroom lessons are highly valued, crafted with greater care, and seldom interrupted. Japanese teachers use collaborative study groups to critique and continually improve their classroom lessons. To make time for this formal planning, Japanese teachers have much larger classes. Most American teachers do not have these built-in opportunities for collaborative analysis and improvement.

TIMSS provides the impetus for states and school districts to think about where their students stand according to international, not just state or local benchmarks, and to identify subjects, grades, and areas where they need to do better. This process can be eye-opening for complacent communities that think their students are "good enough," or for low-performing schools that have a long way to go to prepare their students for a global labor market. The TIMSS Policy Forum participants came to the following conclusions about the possible implications of TIMSS for American education.

• All levels of government have important roles in systemic school improvement. Even TIMSS countries with highly centralized systems use both "top down" and "bottom up" strategies to achieve educational goals--for example, by setting curriculum goals nationally and determining teaching methods locally. In the decentralized U.S. system, school improvement can best be accomplished through combined actions at the local, state, and national levels. Local educators could determine the most effective instructional strategies for their students and design systems that hold people accountable for high student performance. States could lead reforms of curriculum and teacher preparation. The federal government could disseminate information about a range of effective strategies for reform, which states and districts could adopt or adapt.

• New approaches to curriculum reform are needed. Copying the curriculum of other countries is not the answer. Rather, the United States must develop curricular alternatives that fit our pluralistic system and tradition of dispersed control. We could develop new structures for better coordinating curriculum across states and districts and for making difficult choices about which topics are most important and which can be eliminated.

• TIMSS can be a tool for professional development. American teachers can use TIMSS to analyze and improve their own practices--for example, by watching videos of other teachers teaching or by taking TIMSS test items themselves. TIMSS has also identified interesting models for professional development, such as the Japanese lesson study groups. Changing instruction in the United States not only will require new methods of teacher preparation and professional development, but also may require new approaches to school organization, time, and teacher duties.

• TIMSS can help rally public support for school improvement. Presenting TIMSS findings in a clear and engaging format can help policymakers, parents, educators, and the public understand why our students need to do better in science and math. For example, showing parents sample items from the TIMSS test or screening classroom videotapes can illustrate quite vividly what U.S. students know and how U.S. teachers teach compared with their counterparts in other countries.

• Most TIMSS countries have reached a national consensus about standards for curriculum and instruction. The move toward state standards in the United States is a promising way to give more focus to education reform while still respecting our decentralized system. But standards-based reform could compound our curricular problems if states adopt a wide range of content standards that are not high by international benchmarks, or are not concrete enough to be useful to teachers. States and local standards may be more effective if they identify a limited number of topics to be taught and provide guidance on the best ways to teach them.

• TIMSS offers a productive way of comparing the U.S. education system with those of other countries. TIMSS has gone well beyond "horse-race" comparisons. It provides us with the basis for examining our assumptions about education and the social and cultural underpinnings of those assumptions. By reflecting on these international comparisons, it will allow those trying to improve education a better grasp of the problems to be overcome.

• A global economy demands international benchmarks. The U.S. Department of Education has developed a "toolkit" of written and video materials that communities can use to measure their students’ achievement against the international benchmarks of TIMSS and learn more about curriculum and instructional practices associated with high performance (see below).

For Further Information

Additional information, sample test items, and other TIMSS resources are available from two of the Department of Education’s web sites at http://nces.ed.gov/TIMSS/ and http://www.ed.gov/americacounts/ or from the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse Web site at http://www.enc.org/topics/timss/. New information is being added to these sites on a ongoing basis so they are an excellent source of the latest developments relating to TIMSS. Additionally, the Department has a TIMSS Customer Service Hotline to answer questions at (202) 219-1333. Interested persons can obtain copies of the TIMSS reports and a TIMSS Resource Kit through these Web sites, or from the Superintendent of Documents, P.O. Box 371954, Pittsburgh, PA 15250; telephone (202) 512-1800, fax (202) 512-2250. Detailed technical information about the TIMSS data and methodology is available from the TIMSS International Study Center, CSTEEP, School of Education, Boston College, Chestnut Hill MA 02167; telephone (617) 552-4521, fax (617) 552-8419, Internet http://wwwcsteep.bc.edu. Contact information for participants in the National Institute's Policy Forum can be found at the end of this report.

[Foreword]

[What TIMSS Says About Student Achievement]