Can American students compete with their global peers?

Think America is No. 1? Think again, says a new study that compared the math and science scores of U.S. students with those of their peers throughout the world. The American Institutes of Research reports [2] that American eighth graders lag far behind their counterparts in countries such as Taiwan, Singapore, and Japan, inspiring fears that our country will soon lose its economic dominance to our better-educated foreign competitors.

Yet some feel there is little cause for alarm. They say that comparing test scores of vastly different populations may not reveal the quality of education, particularly in countries that do little to promote creativity and freethinking. And the report shows that even students from low-performing U.S. states had higher test scores than students in most other countries. Have people exaggerated the significance of these findings, or will our lagging math and science scores add up to future trouble? Tell us what you think.