From the Editorial Board

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) developed the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), a test given to 15-year-olds around the world every three years since 2000, in order to find out if students “can apply their knowledge to real-life situations and be equipped for full participation in society” (PISA, 2012). The test includes both open-ended and multiple-choice questions to assess reading, mathematics, and science. The 2012 results have provoked discussion about how the U.S. compares to other countries in both the assessment scores and the educational policies that affect those scores. According to the PISA report, 29 countries or economies¹ scored above the U.S. in mathematics literacy, 22 in science literary, and 19 in reading literacy (PISA, 2012).

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan stated that the results are “straightforward and stark” and “a picture of educational stagnation” for the U.S. (Brenchley, 2013, para. 4). He claimed that countries who performed highly on the PISA have both demanding and high-stakes assessments and argued that the U.S. needs to follow suit, invoking the work of education scholars Darling-Hammond and Adamson (2013) to support his assertion (Duncan, 2013). At The High School Journal, we believe, like Duncan, that high student achievement is critically important. We question, however, whether “demanding and high-stakes assessments” are the best means to that end. Further, unlike Duncan, we do not consider Darling-Hammond and Adamson (2013) as advocates for more high-stakes testing, but rather for the development of performance-based measures that allow assessment of deeper learning.

Secretary Duncan represents but one of many perspectives on how to interpret the PISA results and implement changes for improvement. Rees (2013), for example, claimed that in order for U.S. students to catch up to high-performing students in Asia, we should focus on charter schools and the use of online tools such as those provided by the Khan Academy. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), stated that the PISA results indicated that the U.S. should value teachers and public education; support and prepare teachers better, including giving them time to collaborate; increase parent engagement; and implement the Common Core standards more thoughtfully rather than “throw” them at teachers with no support (Cook, 2013). The National Education Association (NEA) noted that the PISA data are extremely complex, and pointed to Carnoy and Rothstein’s (2013) analysis of the 2009 data, which differentiated the results according to poverty levels and therefore provided a more nuanced interpretation of the test results. NEA president Van Roekel stated that the PISA results reveal that high-performing countries value early childhood education, better support their teachers, hold the teaching profession in high esteem, and value collaboration between teachers, parents, and communities (Walker, 2013).

Even scores from high-performing countries warrant scrutiny. Finland, hailed by many education reformers as the model nation, has had a decrease in scores. Their “math performance has been tailing off since 2006” (The Economist, 2013, para. 3). Yla-Jaaski, head of the Technology Academy in Finland, “worries that a focus on raising the achievement of the majority of pupils shortchanges the cleverest” (The Economist, 2013, para. 4). Yet others see mass generalizations such as these as reactionary and unproductive (Sahlberg, 2013; Walker; 2013). Much attention has also been paid to the results from China, or at least those from Shanghai, which are the only ones from mainland China that have been released. Reports point out that China’s hukou system excludes children of migrant workers from attending Shanghai’s residential public schools, forcing them to attend lower-funded migrant schools unless they pay high fees (Loveless, 2013). This system also requires these students to return to their parents’ home province to take their college admissions tests (Loveless, 2013). As such, can the results of Shanghai really be seen as representative of the population of the entire city? Furthermore, should international education policymakers from other nations use them to compare their students’ results to China’s?

At The High School Journal, we think the PISA test results and varying...