As I mentioned yesterday, I am in England, and when I do an Internet search I often run across articles and reports from journals and newspapers in this part of the world.
I did a search on PISA 2013 test results which will be released tomorrow (Tuesday, December 3rd) and the first hit was an article written by Emma O Kelly, who is a reporter for RTE, and has written on PISA in the past.
In this article she previews tomorrow’s PISA results, but more importantly probes the nature of the PISA and highlights some of the pitfalls of using a single test for students from 70 countries.
For her, the big question is how will Ireland fare this time round? 2010’s data showed dramatic declines in Ireland’s ranking for both literacy and maths.
In literacy alone Ireland slid from 5th place in 2000 to 17th place, the biggest fall of any country. Will this picture be sustained? Or was 2010 a strange aberration?
Here are some other questions that she raises:
Is it really possible to compare student performance using a paper and pencil test? Are there dangers related to drawing up league tables of collated average scores for each country? As she points out, many people around the world have raised this concern.
The tables that will be reported tomorrow will be based on an average score, with no regard for other factors such as poverty. For example, in 2011, I reported on the effect of examining PISA results from the lens of poverty. I cited analyses by Mel Riddle on his blog in which he reported research by Dr. Gerold Tirozzi.
Tirozzi “took a closer look at how the U.S. reading scores compared with the rest of the world’s, overlaying it with the statistics on how many of the tested students are in the government’s free and reduced lunched program for students below the poverty line,” according to Cynthia McCabe. The analysis led to this finding:
- In schools where less than 10 percent of students get free or reduced lunch, the reading score is 551. That would place those U.S. students at No. 2 on the international ranking for reading, just behind Shanghai, China which topped the ranking with a score of 556.
- Of all the nations participating in the PISA assessment, the U.S. has, by far, the largest number of students living in poverty–21.7%. The next closest nations in terms of poverty levels are the United Kingdom and New Zealand have poverty rates that are 75% of ours.
- U.S. students in schools with 10% or less poverty are the number one country in the world.
- U.S. students in schools with 10-24.9% poverty are third behind Korea, and Finland.
- U.S. students in schools with 25-50% poverty are tenth in the world.
But this kind of analysis will be absent from newspaper headlines and media reports on the Internet. Generally speaking, we will see only average scores reported, and then we should brace for the end of the world proclamations, especially from those nations whose place on the PISA World Cup League Standings prevents them from participating in the playoffs! (just kidding). But expect “sky is falling” or Sputnik Moment headlines.
Here are some further questions that OKelly raises about the PISA test.
- Is creating and administering a test that measures achievement beyond the scope of testing for students with many languages? What’s the effect on students’ whose first language is not English.
- Are the outcomes valid measures of school performance, and should these results be used by politicians and policy makers to emulate?
- Will tomorrow’s scores result in PISA envy?
PISA will be published at 11.00 a.m. Paris time (10.00 a.m. GMT) on Tuesday 3 December 2013. Follow this link to get the latest story.
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