What this means is that not only did the American students relative performance drop, but when one considers that the sample of students included more low scoring countries and less high scoring European countries, the comparative rankings of American children really declined further than the statistics indicate. The differences between students in the high scoring countries and in the U.S. were significant. American educators and journalists were quick to come up with explanations like these . . . . Teachers in other countries have more professional development and preparation time. Nations with higher rankings teach subjects like geometry, chemistry and physics before high school.
American students use calculators and computers far more than their international peers.
American schools abide by lower standards than European and Asian schools. But the bottom line remains, American students did not do as well on international mathematics testing as American educators expected them to do. As Rita Colwell, director of the National Science Foundation that funded the study, said, it s a little bit depressing. Most recently, besides the results of international testing mentioned above, the issue was raised in conjunction with the vote in the U.S. Congress to significantly increase the number of visas for foreign engineers and other like foreign professionals to work in this country. As reported in the Wall Street Journal , about 843,000 skilled jobs in technology went unfilled out of nearly 1.6 million jobs because of the lack of qualified workers.