Final Exams

To be admitted to a university in England, secondary school students in that country have to pass an eight-hour-long test in chemistry. But in Japan, the entrance exam in chemistry for prestigious Tokyo University lasts only two and a half hours. And the United States' Advanced Placement exam in chemistry, unlike both the other two countries', asks almost no questions about organic chemistry--the specialty of almost half the field's practitioners.

That is the kind of variation researchers found when they compared the end-of-secondary-school mathematics and science tests that college-bound students take in seven industrialized countries. Their findings are the subject of a new report from the Washington-based National Center for Improving Science Education.

The Third International Mathematics and Science Study, a 50-nation project currently in the works, is comparing and analyzing textbooks and curricular guidelines for schools around the world. But few, if any, studies have analyzed subject-matter tests for clues on what nations expect their best students to know when they graduate. "A lot of us felt tests are what's really influential,'' says Senta Raizen, director of NCISE, which obtained a grant from the National Science...