Education in the United States is constantly being portrayed as falling behind other nations like Finland, Singapore, or even China. According to a new report from the National Center for Education Statistics , that's only true in certain parts of the country.

The report converts scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress test given to eighth graders in order to compare them with the TIMSS assessment taken in other countries around the world. The conversion was needed because only some states took the TIMSS.

In Massachusetts, according to the report, eighth graders are getting one of the best educations in the world, with students scoring higher in both math and science than those from Finland's lauded education system. According to the report, the state's scores meet the "high benchmark" for math, which only Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea meet.

Massachusetts eighth grader's science scores are equivalent to number two in the world, behind only Singapore.

Alabama, the worst-performing state, doesn't even meet the "intermediate" benchmark for math and is behind countries like Kazakhstan and Lithuania for both math and science.

Here's the map comparing state performance to the international average:

To look at it another way, here are all of the states, laid out in comparison to the international average:

And here's the comparison of the best states to their international counterparts, alongside the worst performing states:







Read the full report here.



