How well did American kids do in science?

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2023

But also, what happened to Finland? Yesterday, we showed you how American students performed on one part of the 2022 PISA.

The PISA administers tests in three subject areas: Reading Literacy, Science Literacy, Math Literacy. Here are some of the scores we showed you from the 2022 reading test:

Average scores, Reading Literacy, 2022 PISA:
U.S. Asian-American kids: 579
Singapore: 543
U.S. white kids: 537
Japan: 516
South Korea: 515
Taiwan: 515
Canada: 507
United States: 504
Australia: 498
U.K.: 494
Finland: 490
Germany: 480
France: 474 

As you can see, two groups of American kids scored at a very high level on the reading test. As we'll help you see tomorrow, that's a type of fact you'll never be told in major American newspapers.

Also, what happened to Finland? After we raised this general topic on Monday, Kevin Drum posted the graphics from the blogger Cremieux. He also rolled his eyes at the descent of mighty Finland, which had long been the mainstream press corps' favorite.

In real time, we wrote and wrote, then wrote again, about the possible lack of insight involved in the Finland worship. So what the heck happened to Finland last year?

We know of one possible explanation. Please come back tomorrow.

In the numbers posted above, you see two groups of American kids whose scores headed straight off the charts. Your major newspapers won't tell you such things. Tomorrow, we'll offer the links which will let you see this.

We've omitted some of the data we showed you yesterday—data presenting the lower scores of two other groups of American kids. Simply put, our mainstream journalists never report these subgroup scores. Tomorrow, we'll offer a fairly obvious guess concerning the reasons for that.

For today, we'll show you a bunch of scores from the PISA Science Literacy test. In this case, we'll include four subgroup scores by American kids, the good along with the rest:

Average scores, Science Literacy, 2022 PISA:
U.S. Asian-American kids: 578
Singapore: 561
Japan: 547
U.S. white kids: 537
Taiwan: 537
South Korea: 528
Canada: 515
Finland: 511
Australia: 507
U.K.: 500
United States: 499
Germany: 492
France: 487
U.S. Hispanic kids: 471
U.S. black kids: 449

You're right! American kids didn't score quite as well on the science test. In the aggregate, our kids were even outscored by Finland!

In the aggregate, American kids did outperform their counterparts from Germany and France. They were basically even with their peers from the U.K. 

Also this:

Once again, two groups of Americans kids scored at a very high level on this international test. For whatever reason, it's the sort of thing you'll never be told by our major newspapers.

We'll ponder the meaning of all this tomorrow. Also, we'll show you the scores from the Math Literacy test, on which American kids have tended to score quite poorly.

(In the past, American kids have scored much better on the math test administered by the TIMSS, the other major international testing program.)

When it comes to performance by American kids, these PISA scores involve the current long and short of it. Tomorrow, we'll look at the PISA Math Literacy scores, and we'll consider the way these data get reported.

For full PISA data, you should start here. After that, you're on your own.