| Country (ordered by 2007 score) |
1995 | 2007 | |
| TIMSS scale average | 500 | 500 | |
| Singapore | 523 | 587 | * |
| Hong Kong SAR1 | 508 | 554 | * |
| Japan | 553 | 548 | * |
| Latvia2 | 486 | 542 | * |
| England | 528 | 542 | * |
| United States3,4 | 542 | 539 | |
| Hungary | 508 | 536 | * |
| Australia | 521 | 527 | |
| Austria | 538 | 526 | * |
| Netherlands5 | 530 | 523 | |
| Slovenia | 464 | 518 | * |
| Czech Republic | 532 | 515 | * |
| New Zealand | 505 | 504 | |
| Scotland3 | 514 | 500 | * |
| Norway | 504 | 477 | * |
| Iran, Islamic Republic of | 380 | 436 | * |
| *p < .05. 2007 average score is significantly different from 1995 average score. | |||
| 1 Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region (SAR) of the People's Republic of China. | |||
| 2 In 2007, National Target Population did not include all of the International Target Population. | |||
| 3 In 2007, met guidelines for sample participation rates only after substitute schools were included. | |||
| 4 In 2007, National Defined Population covered 90 to 95 percent of National Target Population. | |||
| 5 In 2007, nearly satisfied guidelines for sample participation rates only after substitute schools were included. | |||
| NOTE: Ordering of countries does not imply that scores are measurably different from one another. The Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) scale average was established to have a mean of 500 and a standard deviation of 100, based on the average of all the countries that participated in 1995. Successive TIMSS assessments have scaled achievement data so that scores are equivalent from assessment to assessment. That is, a score of 500 in grade 4 science in 2007 is equivalent to a score of 500 in grade 4 science in 2003 and 1995. The tests for significance take into account the standard error for the reported difference. Thus, a small difference between the United States and one country may be significant, while a large difference between the United States and another country may not be significant. For more information on TIMSS, see supplemental note 5. | |||
| SOURCE: Gonzales, P., Williams, T., Jocelyn, L., Roey, S., Kastberg, D., and Brenwald, S. (2008). Highlights From TIMSS 2007: Mathematics and Science Achievement of U.S. Fourth- and Eighth-Grade Students in an International Context (NCES 2009-001), table 12, data from the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), 2007. | |||
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