An international study of 650,000 4th and 8th graders from 64 countries shows plummeting math scores at both grade levels for American students from 2019-2023, according to Chalkbeat.
Released by the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), the assessment has been administered every four years since 1995. The results are used to monitor the number of students with foundational math and science skills.
As this table shows, although the U.S. remains in the middle of the countries that participated in the 2023 examination, its fourth graders had among the largest declines in average math scores compared with their 2019 peers. Nearly two dozen countries showed improvement (shaded in green) in the first TIMSS test administered since the pandemic. The first column shows 2019 results, and the second column has 2023 scores.
Scores for the highest-performing American fourth graders were about the same as in 2019. The lowest-performing students, those in the bottom 10%, drove U.S. results downward. Their scores dropped by 37 points in math and 22 points in science. The lowest-performing 8th graders saw their scores drop 19 points. One in five American 8th graders scored even lower, indicating they lacked even basic proficiency.
This gap between high- and low-performing students started to widen before the pandemic for reasons that are unclear. Since then, other research into post-pandemic academic performance has found widening gaps across race and income, even as many middle and higher income students are doing well.
Among the questions asked in the TIMSS study are about student absences from school, the resources they have at home, the quality of instruction, including how often students get to conduct science experiments, and whether students like math and science. Not surprisingly, across subjects, grades, and countries, students who rarely missed school scored the highest, and students who missed school often scored the lowest.
Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), said the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results two years ago were “devastating,” and the TIMSS results are “just as devastating.”
“I would call these declines sharp, steep declines,” she said.
Carr says the downward trend for American students is not inevitable, given the number of countries whose scores improved on the latest assessment:
“We have countries leapfrogging over us.”
Perhaps not coincidentally, Kansas graduates recorded the lowest ACT scores and college readiness in more than 20 years.
