US test scores and race

Steve Sailer breaks down the recent test scores of the international math test:

U.S. whites scored 512 on math literacy, which would have ranked them 13th out of 29 OECD countries, between Denmark and France, right in the middle of the pack of European countries. The US score was dragged down by Hispanics (443—0.69 standard deviations below the white score) and African-Americans (417—0.95 standard deviations lower).

Oddly, Asian-Americans scored only 506, a little below whites, even though Northeast Asian countries averaged 527 or higher, but perhaps the explanation is that students in Southeast Asia did much worse (Thailand 417, Indonesia 360), and Asian-Americans are no longer so much restricted to Northeast Asians.

The strong showing by Canada compared to the U.S. may reflect the benefits of a more selective immigration system, compared to the U.S. system, which selects less than 10% of legal immigrants on wealth-creating talent. Most legal immigrants to America get in on being related to a previous immigrant, while illegal immigrants get in on ability to walk across the desert at night. Canada, in contrast, has relatively few illegal immigrants.