Less than half the young Americans correctly calculated the wait for a bus from a schedule. Only one in three young Canadians got it right. Similarly, barely half the Canadians could correctly summarize an article on the vocabulary of business; Americans were also low, two-thirds getting it right. A U.S. analysis called these "distressing weaknesses."

Other findings:

• In general reading proficiency, Canadians did better on a history article but worse on a newspaper rescue story;
• In prose comprehension, Canadians did poorly on poetry but fared substantially better than Americans with a newspaper editorial;
• On everyday documents, Americans scored higher in twice as many questions, with Canadians especially weak on bus schedules and taking telephone messages;

In dealing with numbers, Canadian youth briefly sparkled, outscoring Americans by 25 percentage points on the simple calculation of a lunch bill.

Concern over the low literacy of students is rising. Quebec Education Minister Claude Ryan said senior high school students wrote "as though they never studied grammar and syntax" when more than half failed an essay writing test. The Liberals in Ontario made a $300 million budget boost for elementary schools a main campaign pledge.

In the past, most provinces opposed the creation of an independent agency to monitor education standards across the nation.

The resistance may be weakening. Ontario has joined an international comparison of high school mathematics.

"Evaluation can be a very valuable tool, especially if it's not taken too literally," says Bernard Shapiro, Ontario's deputy minister of education. "You can find out if things are going dramatically up or down."

Many Canadians agree the standards of education are dropping—39 per cent say grade school is worse today than when they went to classes. Thirty per cent say it has improved.