In a pattern similar to 4th and 8th grade, the United States' 12th-grade international standing in science is higher than in mathematics. Even our best mathematics and science students did not fare well in comparison with the best mathematics and science students from other countries. There are no required national curriculum standards in the United States. Most state curriculum frameworks emphasize breadth over depth. Mathematics and science textbooks in the United States were found to be substantially longer than the international average and to express the incoherence, fragmentation, and lack of rigor noted in the U.S. curriculum.
American teachers tend only to state rather than develop concepts.
There was less cohesion in American versus Japanese lessons. While 62 percent of Japanese and 21 percent of German 8th-grade mathematics lessons included deductive reasoning, no American lessons did. Eighty-nine percent of American lessons were found to be of low quality and none were judged to be of high quality. These findings challenge aspects of American education that we have previously taken for granted and force us to reevaluate our cultural assumptions about educational excellence. By comparing our education system to those of other countries, we better understand ourselves.