In the past recent years, tremendous achievement gains have been made by American fourth- and eighth-grade students in math, claims an international survey of student achievement, released on Tuesday. However, performance in Science was flat.

It was put forward by the results that many Asian countries continued to outperform the United States greatly in science and math. Both these subjects are really important for economic competitiveness and research.

The survey dubbed as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, or Timss also found that while world's top scorers in math were the fourth-grade students in Hong Kong and eighth-grade students in Taiwan, Singapore dominated in science at both grade levels.

Stuart Kerachsky, acting commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics at the Education Department, which carried out an analysis of the performance of American students on the test informed, "We were pleased to see improvements in math, and wished we'd seen more in science."

He further informed, "The latest Timss study, the world's largest review of math and science achievement, involved testing a representative sample of students in each country in 2007, the first time the tests had been administered since 2003."

"The results included fourth-grade scores from 36 countries and eighth-grade scores from 48 countries. The tests cover subjects taught in all the participating countries, including algebra, chemistry, geometry and physics."

The International Study Center at Boston College directed the study.