President Obama wants to do something about 8th graders falling to 9th place internationally in math. And by "falling" he meant, they're not 28th anymore.
"We've let our grades slip, our schools crumble, our teacher quality fall short, and other nations outpace us," Obama said in the March 10 speech to the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. "In 8th grade math, we've fallen to 9th place."
The most recent study, published in 2007, did indeed show U.S. 8th graders in 9th place behind five East Asian countries and Hungary, England and Russia.
But it was misleading to say they had "fallen" to 9th place. In 1995, they came in 28th. In 1999, they moved up to in 19th. In 2003, they climbed to 15th. So rather than falling, U.S. students have actually improved in the past decade.
Fine, the President gets partial credit since American students did come in 9th. But the point of his statement was that they had "fallen" to that position and that mathematics performance in the U.S. is getting worse relative to other countries. And that's all Bush's fault too.
Makes me wonder what other little factoids he's misrepresenting out there...
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