Another look at PISA

01-04-2011

Blog by Diane Ravitch/Education Week

Dear Deborah, I have been fascinated by the continuing commentary and controversy about the results of the international tests of reading, mathematics, and science known as PISA (the Program for International Student Assessment). President Barack Obama and Secretary Arne Duncan immediately said that the mediocre standing of American students was "a Sputnik moment," which should produce strong support for their agenda of testing and privately managed schools. Others used the results to promote whatever their favorite remedy was. Some worried that the high test scores of Shanghai were an omen that the Chinese were on the verge of world domination (forgetting that Shanghai is one city in China and not representative of China as a whole). Others looked admiringly at Shanghai's high scores and dreamed that American students might somehow be compelled to accept the rigorous discipline, large classes, after-school tutoring, and devotion to academic success that produced those scores. In The Wall Street Journal, Jiang Xueqin, the deputy principal of Peking University High School, lamented that those high scores were purchased by sacrificing such qualities as independence, curiosity, and individuality. Even educators in Shanghai, he wrote, recognize that the singular devotion to test scores was "producing competent mediocrity." (more…)

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