Please read the latest news from Australia.
The Prime Minister Julia Gillard is obsessed with test scores.
She has a serious case of what Pasi Sahlberg of Finland has called GERM (the Global Education Reform Movement of testing, accountability, and choice).
She is disheartened that Australia is not number one on PISA.
She wants the children pushed, prodded, test-prepped, whatever it takes, until Australia moves up in the ratings to become #5 by 2025.
What is this madness?
Here is an Australian teacher’s take on the “race to the top of PISA.”
How did the PISA tests become the measure of national greatness?
Should we all aspire to be like Shanghai?
Why can’t we recognize that test scores are not the be-all and end-all of human development or of national aspirations?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The country that lies in ruins with the highest PISA scores is the “winner” in this folly of a race.
Doesn’t China outscore us on the PISA? I guess the ed reformers will say we better start doing this with our children:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/technology/foxconn-said-to-use-forced-student-labor-to-make-iphones.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp
Somehow I get the feeling these poor vocational students are not the ones taking the PISA. Lord have mercy on them! 😦