Maybe it is time to stop the steady stream of handwringing over how poorly America’s schoolkids, especially California’s, perform in math and science. They are doing okay even if there still is plenty of room for improvement.
 
That is the takeaway from 2011 test scores, the latest available, in the Trends in International Math and Science Study, an exam given by some states and 46 countries. Because only nine states administered the tests, researchers at the National Center for Education Statistics used data from other tests to compare.
 
They show American public school students have some way to go in catching up with students in several other countries, but they are far ahead of others. American kids trail Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Israel, Russia and Finland. But they are above average and ahead of their counterparts in England, Australia, Italy, New Zealand, Sweden and Thailand. (http://nces.ed.gov/timss/)
 
California public schoolers are a tad behind the American average, trailing England and New Zealand, but ahead of Sweden, Norway, Ukraine, Turkey and Chile on the tests given to fourth and eighth graders.

Private Schools, English Learners
 
Two factors make the California scores seem lower than they probably should: The huge number of English learners in this state’s schools and the large percentage of California kids attending private and parochial schools. English learners are at a disadvantage when taking tests administered in English. Almost a quarter, 23.2 percent of California public school students, were English learners. Many nonpublic schools don’t bother with some standardized tests, often administering only the National Assessment of Educational Progress exam.
 
Fully 8.7 percent of California students attend non-public schools, where tuition can range above $30,000. That means results of the state’s standardized testing often don’t include the children of the state’s wealthiest and best-educated adults. This skews average test scores downward sharply, even if no one can say exactly how much.
 
Meanwhile, all kids in the other countries using the Trends in International Math and Science Study tests actually take them. So California’s score of 493, compared with an international average of 500, is misleading. It leaves out students who will go on to found businesses like Google and the internet real estate firm Zillow, two examples of international companies founded by people who attended private elementary or high schools in California.

A Fresh Handicap

Meanwhile, the profusion of English learners in California public schools, almost all children of parents who can’t come close to affording private school tuition, drags down California scores. These are not dumb children. Studies repeatedly have shown that children taking time-limited tests are at a disadvantage if the tests are administered in languages other than what they speak at home.
 
More than one-third of California students taking the tests speak a language other than English at home. State Dept. of Education figures from 2011, show: 1,441,387 California public school students were classified as English learners (23.2 percent of all pupils) and 2,325,748 spoke a language other than English at home (37.4 percent of all pupils).
 
Considering which students are skimmed from the top before California students even take these tests, while thousands of others are at a great disadvantage, the California scores don’t look bad.
 
They trail Massachusetts, Minnesota, Maryland, Colorado and Connecticut, to name a few high-performing states that score well above the worldwide average. But those places have nowhere near as many English learners as California.
 
Meanwhile, states with almost as high a percentage of English learners – like Texas – scored below California.
 
This suggests California public schools are doing some things right. To get a student populace with high proportions of immigrants’ kids who are not up to par in English performing almost at the international average is no mean feat.

There is plenty of work to do: Those English learners must be brought up to speed as quickly as possible so they can compete for jobs when they emerge from school. None of this suggests an academic doomsday is approaching, as many detractors of public education imply.

Mr. Elias may be contacted at tdelias@aol.com. His book, “The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It,” is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net