The results of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) tests for 2003 were released on 14 December 2004. They contain some important messages about what's happening globally in math and science education--messages that are taken increasingly seriously by the nearly 50 participating nations and, we hope, by the readers of Science. The tests, also given in 1995 and 1999, measure mathematics and science achievement at grades 4 and 8 (reflecting an average of 4 or 8 years of schooling, respectively). Because they are closely linked to school mathematics and science curricula in the participating countries, the tests yield data on student achievement that relate to the concepts learned in their own schools.

Comparative national data for mathematics and science in both grades reveal a near-monopoly by Asia in the top-scoring group, including Singapore, Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan. Several European nations cluster below that, and the United States and several other nations are in the next set. There is a considerable spread of scores among nations, with the average scaled scores from eighth-grade mathematics ranging from 605 (Singapore) to 264 (South Africa). Some of the "best performer" nations were those who ranked high on the United Nations Development Programme's Human Development Index (HDI), but students in Hungary, Malaysia, and South Korea, for example, did much better than their country's HDI. Between 1995 and 2003, scores for both fourth- and eighth-graders in both disciplines increased or held constant in most nations in the TIMSS samples, with improvement being especially noteworthy in fourth-grade mathematics scores. For international science, that's good news.