The OECD is so pleased with the “success” of international testing for K-12 that it wants to bring the same testing to higher education. Then, presumably, it would be possible to compare higher education across nations and see who is best, who ranks lowest, and get everyone to compete on the terms that OECD chooses.
This is nothing less than a bold power grab by OECD, which arrogates to itself the authority to determine the rules of the game, the shape of the playing field, and the definition of winners and losers. If nothing else, it reminds us how nonsensical it is to compare institutions that differ in many ways within the same city, the same state, and of course, the nation.
What happens if OECD determines that higher education is better in nation A than nations B, C, D, etc.? Should everyone move to nation A?
If this idea proceeds, we can be sure that universities will start teaching to the OECD tests. OECD will become the arbiter of the question, “what knowledge is of most worth?”
We can safely predict, as I did in a speech to the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities last year that the NCLB framework will ensnare higher education and restrict imagination and creativity. Who will measure the value of courses in art history, Ancient Greek, anthropology, diplomatic history or other studies that have enormous cultural rewards, but limited economic promise? How do we measure the economic value of independent, well-informed thought?
For a good critique of the testing obsession, read Pasi Sahlberg’s “Finnish Lessons” and Yong Zhao’s “World Class Learners.”
OECD’s ambition to measure the world exemplifies what Sahlberg calls the Global Educational Reform Movement, or GERM.
Many years ago, I interviewed an MIT professor who was widely renowned as a physicist but also for his interest in K-12 issues. He said to me, “Let me write a nation’s tests and I care not who writes its songs or poetry.” Think about it. The power to judge a nation by whether it passes tests of your design is the power to control.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This seems to be yet another attempt to turn education into a bland but highly uniform product. What constitutes a good university? One that is a trade school preparing students for the workplace? One that allows personal growth? One that nurtures intellectual examination of the world? Each person who goes to university has his or her own unique set of reasons for attending a certain school. OECD and all the other entities that seek to rank and critique education through standardized tests consistently demonstrate how little they know about the value of education. I hope that these highly misguided efforts do not infect education globally. It will be a sad world of bland uniformity, of mediocre product. We would all do well to read Charles Dickens’s Hard Times. Dickens saw the problems with the highly standardized, assembly line education in the mid 1800’s.
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It is an interesting article, and did a reasonable job balancing the points of view. And I am saying that as one who is biased against such an absurd idea. However the closing statement says it all: “Ahelo is going to reveal the truth about quality in higher education,” he (Dr. Schleicher) said. “Not everybody is going to like the results.”
Give that a close read, and you’ll hear the evil laughter.
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I would think/hope that implementing a regieme of testing in higher education would be difficult. For one thing, colleges & universities would have to cooperate, and they have good reasons not to do so. American higher education institutions already have had the dismal experience of the damage caused by the US News & World Report ratings; and universities face enough financial problems without adding the costs of testing.
Furthermore, students would have to cooperate as well. By the time students get to college or university in most countries they’ve been through a lot of standardized tests; it’s difficult to see why they would agree to take another standardized test which won’t benefit them personally. And if the only students taking the test must be paid to do so, the results would, obviously, be pretty unreliable.
Finally, what benefit would anyone get from the results of such testing. There are so many factors that determine what higher ed institution is best for each particular student that results of one test is meaningless. And multiple factors (beyond academic learning) affect how much benefit a graduate receives from earning a degree from a particular school, or in a particular country. Frankly, the whole idea that anyone could compare higher education in various countries with a test is pretty stupid.
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This movement just dovetails all too well with what looks to be coming down the road for Higher Ed in the US anyways. With Arne Duncan at the helm, what you might think would require “cooperation” is much more likely to be coercion, as Duncan has done with K12 education, making compliance contingent for receiving Title IV federal financial aid for students.
Considering assessment companies have not yet tapped into the Higher Ed profit pool, in this zeitgeist, it would not be too difficult to for them to accomplish that with Duncan leading the charge.
We have to hope that since higher ed is dominated by men, unlike the female dominated P-12, their voices will be strong and heard.
Diane, I hope you are including Higher Ed in your advocacy campaign!
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And the nation will be shocked, shocked I tell you, to discover that the University of Chicago scores higher than Morton College in Cicero. I guess that means that Morton needs to be put on probation, and if they can’t make AYP, then they’ll be closed and/or have their staff fired (including the cleaning and food service staff) and/or be reorganized or charterized. Maybe they can pay big bucks for consultants from the University of Chicago to come in and see what Morton is doing wrong. Anyway, it all boils down to those lazy, entrenched instructors making such big bucks and being in it for the money.
I think we’ve been down this road….
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“What happens if OECD determines that higher education is better in nation A than nations B, C, D, etc.? Should everyone move to nation A?”
This statement cracked me up!
To those not enamored with The Almighty Test, the foolishness of OECD so profoundly glares as to become nothing more than a pompous display of ignorance.
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Well, I guess MBA-ers, marketers, and politicians think they know best. Right! The know how to steal from students and teachers/professors and line their pocketbooks. SAD! Fascist! Repressive! Grades for Obama and Duncan -= F.
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Not “F” but “F-“.
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If their grade was a percentage it would be a negative one!
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And I have been hoping that maybe university professors would comment on the insanity of Common Core in the K-12 system.
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First, I concur with Diane’s recommendations of Pasi Sahlberg FINNISH LESSONS (2011) and Yong Zhao WORLD CLASS LEARNERS (2012).
Second, I would remind people to look past the incidentals. Parent Revolution, for example, makes no bones about how and why they do what they do: divide and conquer in order to advance the corporate privatizer/charterite program no matter the cost to people and communities and democracy for generations to come.
And this movement is international.
On July 4, 2013, Diane had a blog entitled “Remembering Martin Niemoller” with a modified version of a famous quote by him, which I include unmodified below:
“First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me— and there was no one left to speak out for me.”
—Martin Niemöller, prominent Protestant pastor, interned in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps 1938-1945
Unless one is completely ignorant of what has been happening at least since NCLB and RTTT—and its counterparts elsewhere in the world—it comes as no surprise that “counterproductive Holy Edumetrics anywhere is a threat to good education everywhere.” [apologies to Dr. Martin Luther King, although I think he would approve of my paraphrase]
Don’t agonize. Organize.
🙂
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Universities in the US are ranked all the time, individual departments almost as often. Most of the rankings are based on admission decisions and research, though Washington Monthley does an interesting set of rankings (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/college_guide/toc_2012.php)
Students might benefit from alternative rankings, but I agree that it is highly unlikely that schools who rank highly under the traditional metrics will have any interest in cooperating with a new metric.
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And all those rankings are 100% USDA grade AA pure bovine excrement!
Help me out KTA, wasn’t it a now probably dead male who said something to the effect of: “Not everything that can be counted counts. Not everything that counts can be counted.”
(not Einstein, by the way)
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I would have thought you would disagree with that quote and say instead that nothing that counts can be counted.
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Duane Swacker: according to the Quote Investigator [QI], Albert Einstein was likely not the person who coined “Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.”
QI: “the preponderance of currently available information indicates that William Bruce Cameron combined two phrases to create the adage. He also seems to have coined at least one of the two phrases that were combined. In addition, current evidence suggests that the full two-part adage was created after the death of Einstein.”
http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/05/26/everything-counts-einstein/
William Bruce Cameron is male but, oddly, I can’t seem to google anything that tells us whether he is dead or not.
Although he shouldn’t have to be dead to appreciate his quote…
I hope you agree.
🙂
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Yes. And I read the same info on quoteinvestigator. I thought maybe you had a different source for verifying quotes.
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What is OECD?
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The organization for economic cooperation and development. It is basically a group of high income countries.
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Ah, in other words a group of exploiters of other’s wealth, oops I meant to say “a group of capitalists”.,
And my question was meant to be rhetorical as we educators have a tendency to use acronyms without spelling out what the acronym stands for.
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I understand the knee jerk reaction against another measurement, but take a look at the design and purpose of PISA (also done by OECD) as well as NAEP. Looking at higher education through a similar lens and methodology, I think, will provide valuable insight into higher education. Actually measuring student performance will be welcome as compared to what other rankings do. US News is an example of how NOT to conduct rankings or analysis. Also, PISA, and probably OECD’s higher ed initiative, is not meant to compare individual institutions as not all institutions will be measured. Please, I understand that high stakes assessments have gone crazy, but this is not that. Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.
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Sorry, jbryer, I fail to see what will be learned from a PISA assessment for higher Ed.
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I don’t think PISA has informed higher education, but using the PISA research framework for a new study for higher education would have tremendous value.
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PISA has been tremendously useful, if you go beyond the simple descriptives the news media cite, in understanding the relationship of SES and student outcomes. I think that question alone would be useful in higher education. It seems that education, including higher education, is thought to be the mechanism of social mobility. PISA suggest otherwise. PISA has also reveals that we don’t have an education problem in the US, but a poverty problem. I would like to know who is going to college in the US and other nations. PISA isn’t completing about math and reading scores but tells us a lot about who is going to school.
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We don’t need PISA to determine that poverty is a problem.
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