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American teens scored about average in reading and science and below average in mathematics compared to their counterparts around the world on the most recent Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the results of which were released Tuesday by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
The 2012 findings—the latest available for the exam given every three years—show little improvement in U.S. students’ scores from 2009 levels, even as the scores of students in other countries improved during the same period. The results have sparked debate among U.S. education experts this week on the proper way to interpret the major findings in the data—and what relevance the PISA should have to future U.S. education policy.
The 2012 PISA surveyed more than 510,000 15-year-olds in 65 countries—34 OECD countries and 31 partner countries and economies.
In the United States, 6,000 students at 161 schools were randomly selected to be tested for the exam. Notably, the 2012 version of the exam is focused primarily on mathematics, with reading, science, and problem-solving included only as minor areas of assessment.
Highlights of the data
Of the 34 OECD countries, the United States ranked about 17th in reading, about 21st in science, and about 26th in mathematics (all estimated figures), with “no significant change in these performances over time,” according to the OECD. Other highlights of the findings include:
- U.S. parents are better educated than in most other countries, ranking the sixth highest among OECD countries in parents of 15-year-olds who have attained higher education.
- Among OECD countries, the United States has the sixth largest proportion of students with an immigrant background, but the share of students from disadvantaged backgrounds is average.
- Spending per student does not translate into better performance; for example, the United States spends twice as much per student as the Slovak Republic, but its students perform about the same. In fact, the United States spends more per student than all but four of the OECD countries.
- U.S. students have “weaknesses in performing mathematics tasks with higher cognitive demands” but “a successful implementation of the Common Core Stands would yield significant performance gains,” according to the OECD.
- Socio-economic background has a significant impact on student performance in the United States, with some 15 percent variation. “Although this impact has weakened over time, disadvantaged students show less engagement, drive, motivation, and self-beliefs,” OECD notes.
- U.S. students are “largely satisfied” with their schooling, and view their relationships with teachers positively, although only 50 percent of them are interested in learning mathematics.
More testing required?
The reaction of education professionals and other thought leaders to the data has been decidedly mixed. Some stakeholders are beginning to use the findings to champion the Common Core State Standards (CCSS)—which 45 states, the District of Colombia, four U.S. territories, and the Department of Defense have adopted—as the solution to dramatically improving the problem-solving and higher-order thinking skills that U.S. students lack.
However, some say the PISA findings actually prove that the emphasis on testing U.S. students in recent years has hindered their learning progress, and therefore should not be the way to move forward with the CCSS and other reforms. Others note, above all, that international comparisons do little to paint an accurate picture of U.S. schools and their varied demographics.
For example, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES)—which issued a report that explores the PISA data and its methodology and highlights relative NCES findings on specific states—the latest findings show that U.S. education “lags behind” the world. “While we’re standing still, other countries are making progress,” Jack Buckley, NCES commissioner, told Education Week.
Paul E. Peterson and Eric Hanushek—authors of Endangering Prosperity: A Global View of the American School (Brookings Institution Press, 2013)—agree. “The bitter reality is that American students’ performance on international math, science, and reading tests is still sub-par,” says Peterson. “This embarrassing performance, unchanged even as politicians and citizens profess a keen interest in improving our schools, bodes poorly for the future economic security of the United States.”
Adds Hanushek,”What the PISA results show is the dire need to entertain more radical changes in our stagnant schools: more choice, more performance pay, and more local decision-making. Each of these will help America’s kids, however, only if there is also a good system of standardized testing that identifies failing schools and holds them accountable. Then, when the next round of international test scores is released in 2016, we may finally have some genuine good news.”
Yet Diane Ravitch—education historian, education policy analyst, and author, most recently of Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools (Random House, 2013)—holds the opposite view. She stresses on her blog that the use of the words “stagnant,” “lagging,” and “flat” to describe U.S. students is “wrong, wrong, wrong.”
Missing the mark
In fact, Ravitch points out that the United States has never ranked near the top on international tests; that research shows no link between test scores and wealth; that U.S. citizens show more ambition and drive than other countries; and that dire predictions of a failing nation have not been borne out—that the U.S. remains a leader in the world economy, with a productive workforce.
One of Ravitch’s key points is that the PISA findings show that the last dozen years of U.S. public education policy—particularly No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top—are “manifest failures” at raising test scores despite billions invested in those initiatives.
Further, “the scores tell us nothing about students’ imagination, their drive, their ability to ask good questions, their insight, their inventiveness, their creativity,” Ravitch writes. “If we continue the policies of the Bush and Obama administrations in education, we will not only not get higher scores…but we will crush the very qualities that have given our nation its edge as a cultivator of new talent and new ideas for many years.”
Poverty is also on Ravitch’s mind, and she says that “improving the quality of life for the nearly one-quarter of students who live in poverty would improve their academic performance.”
That view is shared by Daniel A. Domenech, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators (AASA), aka the School Superintendents Association. “Poverty in America is the real issue behind today’s education gap, and it means students can experience different education trajectories because of where they live,” he says. “It is something we must address if we are serious about bolstering student learning and closing achievement gaps.”
Domenech also points out that, contrary to some interpretations, “It’s important to realize that children in the United States are not falling behind. Today, the dropout rate, which has been declining steadily since 1972, is the lowest it has ever been,” he says. “High school completion rates have been trending up as we have the highest high school graduation rate in decades.”
Investigative journalist Amanda Ripley, author of The Smartest Kids in the World (S & S, 2013), has some interesting takeaways as well. Her bestselling book examines the education systems of the top-scoring PISA countries of 2009, so she’s intimately familiar with what the PISA can reveal—or not—about U.S. education policy and student achievement.
Though poverty is a factor, she says that it does not fully explain why some poorer countries (Vietnam, Estonia, Poland) are still outscoring the United States in mathematics on the PISA, nor why the richest U.S. students score far below their wealthy counterparts worldwide.
Ripley also says some of the most valuable data is the comparison of students’ scores in the context of their economic, social, and cultural status, and that the large number of countries with relatively high rates of child poverty that broke into the top ranks of PISA this year “gives hope” to the United States.