More on the AIR study

USA TODAY U.S. students 'middle of the pack' compared with world
Educators and politicians these days make a point of saying that U.S. schoolchildren aren't just competing locally for good, high-paying jobs — they're competing globally."

"Crunching the most recent data from a pair of U.S. and international math and science exams for middle-schoolers, Gary Phillips, a researcher at the non-profit American Institutes for Research (AIR), a non-partisan Washington think tank, finds a decidedly mixed picture: Students in most states perform as well as — or better than — peers in most foreign countries.

But he also finds that even those in the highest-scoring states, such as Massachusetts and Minnesota, are significantly below a handful of top-scoring nations such as Singapore, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan."

"He should know. Before joining AIR, he headed the National Center for Education Statistics at the U.S. Education Department, overseeing large-scale testing programs that included the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS ), the two tests he compares in the new analysis."

EdWeek: Top-Achieving Nations Beat U.S. States in Math and ScienceStudents in the highest-performing U.S. states rank well below their peers in the world’s top-achieving countries in mathematics and science skill, according to a new study that judges American youths on an international scale.

CSM: World's schools teach U.S. a lesson
For states interested in international benchmarking, a new report just added a piece to the puzzle. It takes data from each state's 8th-grade scores in math and science on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and links it to the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). The two tests were designed to be compatible, says Gary Phillips, chief scientist at American Institutes for Research (AIR, www.air.org), a nonprofit in Washington that released the data Nov. 13. Each state can see where it ranks on a scale with 45 industrialized and developing countries.

"Most [states] are doing as well as or better than most countries," Mr. Phillips says. But he's concerned because "our best states are ... lower than the best countries – so even though we're in the race, we're not winning the race."