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World's Largest Science Test Makes Massachusetts Schools Look Good
Why "We're No. 2!" is not a bad thing: High scores on an international science and math exam taken by eighth graders around the world show that Massachusetts students are doing better than American students as a whole.
Our citywide angst over the education of Boston’s children caught a break this week, with the good-news results for Massachusetts from an international study of mathematics and science achievement. The ray of sunshine in these parts is that Massachusetts eighth graders scored second highest in the world on the science portion of the TIMSS, the 2011 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study. Just Singapore’s scores were higher. In math, the Commonwealth ranked sixth behind South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Japan. The test, taken by 600,000 eighth graders worldwide, is meant to show learning trends over time and has been given every four years since 1995. Massachusetts participated at a level which allowed …
