Science Standards: Averages Deceive

摘要

In their editorial "seeking science stan-dards" (28 May, p. 1075), A. I. Leshner, S. Malcom, and J. E. Roseman provide a flawed comparison of U.S. and foreign students. AAAS Fellow B. L. Benderly writes in Scientific American (1) that averages are not a useful metric for this comparison. Benderly summarizes work by Michael Teitelbaum, B. Lindsay Lowell, and Hal Salzman, indicating that the United States has more high-scoring students than any other country, in addition to a substantial number of the lowest-scoring students (according to the Trends in International Math and Science Study).