The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a test of reading literacy, mathematics, and science given every three years to 15-year-olds in more than 60 countries by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Results from the 2012 test show the performance of US students fell slightly in comparison to other countries. US scores went from:
- 25th in 2009 to 31st in 2012 in math
- 20th in 2009 to 24th in 2012 in science
- 11th in 2009 to 21st in 2012 in reading
Although the results pass the test of statistical significance, they don’t really count as “news,” since the US has always performed close to the average or just below on international tests. The PISA has been given every three years since 1990, and about 6,000 randomly selected students from 161 public and private schools in the US participated. About five or 10 schools were used in Maryland, although the list will not be made public.
Three US states—Florida, Connecticut, and Massachusetts—included enough students on the PISA to get data at the state level, the Wall Street Journal reported. Connecticut and Massachusetts teens beat the OECD averages on all exams, but Florida came in below the OECD averages in math and science.
Analysts will burn the midnight oil over the results from the massive 2012 administration of the PISA test for months and months to come, but the high-level results shown above are available now in this report.
Angel Gurría, OECD Secretary-General, spoke first at the PISA Day celebration in Washington. He said the US would benefit from the proper implementation of the Common Core standards.
“In addition, our analysis shows that US students often struggle with tasks that are cognitively demanding and which require complex mathematical thinking,” he said. “These are the kinds of skills valued most by the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics, a most valued and valuable tool already adopted by most states.
“At the other end of the performance scale, the United States also has a below-average share of top performers in mathematics,” he continued. “Only 2 percent of American students reach the highest level of math performance, showing they can conceptualize, generalize, use and apply math creatively. That compares with an OECD average of 3 percent and over 30 percent of the students from Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Chinese Taipei, and Korea. This is not only a great loss to the American economy; it is also about people’s future.”
Mr Gurría’s speech was marked with similar generalities and vague references to people’s futures. It is unclear what he meant by “people’s future,” but it seems to be something tied to an understanding of mathematics.
Understandably, the OECD holds, according to the secretary-general, a belief that students who are strong in math feel more like participants in society and in the political process. In other words, not only is performance on math tests tied to the American economy and “people’s futures,” but it is also tied to being good citizens and participating fruitfully in democracy.
A little dramatic, perhaps, but probably not a total fabrication.
Education “is an investment that pays long-term dividends for the economy, for individual well-being, for civic participation and public health, and for the overall prosperity of our societies,” he concluded. “I know that the US Department of Education, the OECD, [and] the other participants in the PISA survey share the same passion for improving our education systems.”
Yes, we do, Mr Secretary-General. Here’s where it gets really interesting. Although the secretary-general’s remarks stopped short of criticizing US education policy, since no single test or even a series of tests over several years is broad enough to paint that stroke, he did recommend we get away from an over-reliance on standardized tests and move toward a more cooperative, collaborative, and collegial system for teachers. If this was truly what the PISA results showed, it would seem to condemn many reform efforts now under way in US schools.
US schools should, he said, “find ways to allocate the most talented teachers and school leaders to the most challenging schools and classrooms.” PISA also found that the highest-performing countries allocate educational resources more equitably among advantaged and disadvantaged schools than the US does. In other words, the US allocates fewer resources for kids living in poverty than other countries, and this needs to change.
Then he turned his focus to teachers, praising the Race to the Top grant competition and the use of internationally benchmarked exams to reward teachers. This may have been a reference to merit-based pay, but it was not explicit in the secretary-general’s remarks. “In many respects, teachers are the key to success,” he concluded. Top school systems:
- Focus on teacher selection and retention and provide strong pathways for career growth
- Create an environment for teachers to be innovative and share good practices
Whoa! That’s a great idea! In order to do this, those high-performing national systems do not require “standardization and compliance,” but instead “enable teachers to be inventive; instead of looking upwards in the bureaucracy, they look outwards to create networks of innovation across teachers and schools.”
This, I have said (along with many other commentators), is the key to the Common Core. It creates a system that allows teachers in Utah to speak the same vocabulary as teachers in Vermont, whereas before the adoption of common standards of learning across states, there was absolutely no motivation for a teacher in Oregon to collaborate with a teacher in Wisconsin. Unfortunately, high-stakes tests will destroy any impetus created by a common set of standards and bring us right back to Square One (or square 25, as the PISA would seem to say).
I promise, we’re working on building a network! It will require us to stop arguing about the learning standards and get on with the business of fine-tuning them as we find out which ones work and which ones don’t in our classrooms. It will also require us to kill these stupid standardized tests, made up of stupid questions that don’t address the kinds of higher-order thinking Mr Gurría talked about. Our efforts are being thwarted by an invasion of bad standardized tests, and we have to stop it now.
At every turn in the current system, with teachers’ jobs on the line from high-stakes tests, we create exactly the opposite of an environment that encourages them to share their innovations. They’re going to be keeping them all to themselves, especially if there’s a chance they may fall on the bubble between the low-performing teachers who are fired and those who are just barely retained. In a competitive system, nobody has an interest in sharing their best and most effective strategies.
This is why I have said, repeatedly, time and time again, competition is repugnant to the Common Core. Any system of high-stakes standardized tests that creates competition between students will fail. Any high-stakes tests that are used to rank teachers will fail. What teachers need in order to be effective is what the secretary-general prescribed: an environment that will encourage them to share their innovations.
What can we do to help them build those networks? That’s the question we should be asking. Our state legislatures have already adopted the Common Core. It’s not perfect, so let’s massage the details to make it better, but keep it common across the country in order to facilitate the establishment of networks that will allow teachers to share their best practices with each other.