Toro
Diamond Member
U.S. teens have weak practical math skills
Test finds Americans score as well as top foreign kids but lag in real-world applications
By Greg Toppo, USA TODAY
U.S. high school students match their peers in other nations when it comes to math skills. But ask them to apply those skills to real-world situations and things begin to look a bit bleak, a new study suggests.
The nation's 15-year-olds make a poor showing on a newly released international test of practical math applications, ranking 24th out of 29 industrialized nations, behind South Korea, Japan and most of Europe. U.S. students' scores were comparable to those in Poland, Hungary and Spain.
Results of the test, known as the Program for International Student Assessment, were released Monday by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of industrialized nations. It's administered every three years, this time in 29 OECD nations and 10 others. This is the first time the test has included practical math applications.
U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige called the results "a blinking warning light" that shows the need to reform U.S. high schools. Most of the students tested were 10th-graders.
USA TODAY Education - Math, Science and Technology
Thank God for immigration.