Maryland Has Higher Percentage of Advanced Math Students Than 40 States

Maryland students fare well against other states in proving advanced at math, but fall short against international competition.

A recently-released study from Education Next, an education policy and research journal, shows that 6.8 percent of ninth grade students in Maryland scored at the advanced level in math in 2006. That percentage makes Maryland the tenth-highest scoring state in the U.S., but puts it below other nations, including Taiwan, Japan, Norway, Estonia, Hungary and Poland.

Students were tested in 2006 on the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), which measured student performance in 57 countries including the U.S. The test is written by member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, a Paris-based group whose goals include encouraging international economic development and maintaining global financial stability, which oversees the test. These students were in the high school class of 2009.

The countries that had a percentage of advanced math students that was similar to Maryland's in 2006 were Russia and Lithuania, according to Education Next. Thirty countries had higher percentages of advanced math students than Maryland.

Among participating countries, Taiwan has the highest percentage of advanced math students on the PISA, with 28 percent.

Massachusetts was the top-ranked U.S. state in achieving advanced math scores, with 11.4 percent of its students scoring advanced on PISA. The other states with higher percentages of advanced math students than Maryland include Minnesota, Vermont, New Jersey, Washington, Virginia, Connecticut, Oregon, and North Carolina.

The study was conducted by Eric A. Hanushek and Paul E. Peterson, both senior fellows at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, and Ludger Woessmann at the University of Munich in Germany.

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