Take This Test (Please), writes John Merrow on Taking Note. He lists five test questions that “may explain why American students score lower than their counterparts in most other advanced nations.”
From the University of Wisconsin/Oshkosh  for high school students:
Jack shot a deer that weighted (sic) 321 pounds. Tom shot a deer that weighed 289 pounds. How much more did Jack’s deer weigh then (sic) Tom’s deer?
From TeacherVision, part of Pearson :
Linda is paddling upstream in a canoe. She can travel 2 miles upstream in 45 minutes. After this strenuous exercise she must rest for 15 minutes. While she is resting, the canoe floats downstream ½ mile. How long will it take Linda to travel 8 miles upstream in this manner?
Merrow wonders whether students will be “distracted by Linda’s cluelessness,” asking “how long it will take her to figure out that she should grab hold of a branch while she’s resting in order to keep from floating back down the river.”
From a high school math test in Oregon:
There are 6 snakes in a certain valley. The population doubles every year. In how many years will there be 96 snakes?
The new Common Core standards expect students to do more than subtract and count on their fingers by high school, notes Merrow.
From New York state’s sample tests for eighth graders:
Triangle ABC was rotated 90° clockwise. Then it underwent a dilation centered at the origin with a scale factor of 4. Triangle A’B’C’ is the resulting image. What parts of A’B’C’ are congruent to the corresponding parts of the original triangle? Explain your reasoning.
No illustration is provided, says Merrow.
From PISA (for Programme in International Student Assessment), here’s a question for 15-year-olds around the world:
Mount Fuji is a famous dormant volcano in Japan. The Gotemba walking trail up Mount Fuji is about 9 kilometres (km) long. Walkers need to return from the 18 km walk by 8 pm.
Toshi estimates that he can walk up the mountain at 1.5 kilometres per hour on average, and down at twice that speed. These speeds take into account meal breaks and rest times.
Using Toshi’s estimated speeds, what is the latest time he can begin his walk so that he can return by 8 pm?
The correct answer (11 am) was provided by 55 percent of 15-year-olds in Shanghai and only 9 percent of U.S. students.
American kids score highest in “confidence in mathematical ability,” despite underperforming their peers in most other countries, PISA reports. “Is their misplaced confidence the result of problems like ‘Snakes’ and others of that ilk?” asks Merrow.