U.S teenagers rank 17th in science

American teenagers scored lower in science than students in a majority of other industrialized countries participating in a prominent international exam, in results that testing officials said they released early after the scores unexpectedly slipped out abroad. Fifteen-year-old U.S. students ranked lower, on average, than their peers in 16 other countries, including those in Finland, Canada, Japan, the Czech Republic, and Ireland, out of 30 total industrialized nations, on the 2006 Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA.

At a time when many public officials are decrying American students’ middling performance on the international stage, the latest results seem likely to draw a glum reaction in political and education circles. The United States’ average score of 489 on the PISA science section also fell below the average score among industrialized nations of 500. In 2003, the last time PISA measured science, U.S. students scored an average of 491, also below the international average for industrialized nations of 500. Read the article in Education Week.