Comparative study of student science achievement between United States and China

Abstract

Comparable Chinese and American databases were identified in this study through a review of existing international projects in the United States and China. The Chinese data were collected from a random sample of more than 12,000 ninth-grade students in the SISS Extended Study, a key project supported by the China State Commission of Education in the late 1980s. The U.S. data were collected at the same grade level using the same international instrument. The achievement comparison revealed a small difference between Chinese and American average scores. Variability of the score distribution was larger in the United States than in China. These findings were triangulated with other comparative research results to shed light on the condition of Chinese and American science education.