Match, Science And Reading: American Students Are Under Performing Behind Peers From Asian Nations

Education Secretary John B. King Jr. U.S. students are losing ground when the world is already driven by a knowledge-based economy. The best jobs can already go anywhere else. Massachusetts, Maryland, and Minnesota students are not just competing with counterparts in Finland, Germany, and Japan but also with the rest of the world - but how could they deal with the Math problem?

Peggy Carr, acting commissioner at the National Center for Education Statistics says that the declining performance in Math has been detected but it persists. The PISA or 2015 Program for International Student Assessment is the latest body that reports the underperformance of the U.S.  compared to other Asian nations in this area of study.

American students got below the international average in math and just about average in both science and reading. Singapore tops all three subjects based on the PISA test. A bit more than half a million students who are 15-year-olds from 70 nations took part in the 2015 examination. The Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development or OECD coordinated the test, according to Fox News.

The report from the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that is done three times a year shows that U.S. students rank the 40th in the world as far as math is concerned. This is out of 72 countries or educational systems.

Six percent of American students who took the OECD math test had scored in the highest proficiency bracket, but 29 percent did pass the standard proficiency mark. In Science where 5,700 U.S. students took part in the test, the country ranked 25th and 24th and 24th in reading literacy.

Singapore garnered the overall top world rankings in this computer-based quiz and followed by Japan, Estonia, Finland, and Canada. Massachusetts, however, is showing good scores if ranked by state. It can fall just behind Singapore's score in science and around the sixth place for reading, as per Business Insider.