Massachusetts has long upheld its reputation for higher education. The Boston/Cambridge area alone holds over 50 colleges and universities, including many of the best in the world (Harvard, MIT, Tufts, and of course Boston University). It is no surprise that this beautiful city is full of students from all over the country and all over the world, each looking for the best education money can buy and each finding it.
Yet Massachusetts exceeds expectations at every turn. Yes, they are known for their colleges, but this state also boasts some of the highest math and science scores of elementary to high school students in the world:
If Massachusetts were a country, its eighth graders would rank second in the world in science, behind only Singapore….Massachusetts eighth graders also did well in mathematics, coming in sixth, behind Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan.
Kenneth Chang’s article, which you can read in its entirety here, explores the efforts that have been made across the state to improve the standard of education, not just in the richer districts, but everywhere. The increase in performance has been universal and steady. In a country spending so much time and energy on education reform, most of which seems largely counter-productive, it is nice to know that this state is living up to the standards of the next 100 years.
