Participating Countries

State and district participation as benchmarking participants in international assessments provides them with the opportunity to assess the comparative international standing of their students' achievement and to view their curriculum and instruction in an international context.

The costs associated with state and district participation have been variously borne by the states/districts themselves or by the federal government. In the latter case, state/district participation is usually tied to a special study being conducted by NCES or its partners. For example, the states and districts that participated in TIMSS 1999 did so at the request of the National Science Foundation, as these states and districts were then-recipients of Math and Science Partnership (MSP) grants. The states participating in TIMSS 2011 (with the exception of Florida) are doing so at the request of NCES to validate a Linking Study between the national assessment (NAEP) and TIMSS. The Linking Study aims to develop TIMSS estimates for all 50 states and the District of Columbia, based on joint administrations of NAEP and TIMSS and validated by a number of states taking TIMSS as individual benchmarking participants with state representative sample.

All states and districts that participate in TIMSS as benchmarking participants administer the assessments following the same guidelines as those developed for the main TIMSS assessments. The 1995 benchmarking report is available at http://timssandpirls.bc.edu/timss1995i/BENCH97.html. The 1999 benchmarking report is available at http://timss.bc.edu/timss1999b/publications.html. For other data collection years, the results are published in the international TIMSS reports, available at http://timssandpirls.bc.edu/.

The following states and districts have participated in TIMSS:

State	1995	1999	2003	2007	2011	2015
Alabama					X
California					X
Colorado	X				X
Connecticut		X			X
Florida					X	X
Idaho		X
Illinois	X	X
Indiana		X	X		X
Maryland		X
Massachusetts	X	X		X	X
Michigan		X
Minnesota	X			X	X
Missouri	X	X
North Carolina		X			X
Oregon	X	X
Pennsylvania		X
South Carolina		X
Texas		X
District or Consortia
Academy School District #20, Colorado Springs (CO)		X
Chicago Public Schools (IL)		X
Delaware Science Coalition (DE)		X
First in the World Consortium (IL)	X	X
Fremont/Lincoln/Westside Public Schools (NE)		X
Guilford County (NC)		X
Jersey City Public Schools (NJ)		X
Miami-Dade County Public Schools (FL)		X
Michigan Invitational Group (MI)		X
Montgomery County (MD)		X
Naperville Community Unit School District #203 (IL)		X
Project SMART Consortium (OH)		X
Rochester City School District (NY)		X
SW Pennsylvania Math and Science Collaborative (PA)		X