BOULDER, CO (October 30, 2015) – For 15 years, journalists, advocates and policymakers have cited scores on international tests, such as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), to conclude that American student achievement “lags woefully behind” other nations, threatening our future and suggesting an urgent need for education reform.
A brief published today by the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado Boulder explores such policy analyses and claims around PISA as well as a second prominent international test, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS).
In International Test Score Comparisons and Educational Policy: A Review of the Critiques, Stanford education professor Martin Carnoy focuses on four main critiques of analyses that use average PISA scores as a comparative measure of student achievement.