Educator Katie Zahedi and Professor Heinz Dieter Meyer wrote a letter critical of PISA’s emphasis on high-stakes testing and global competition. The letter has been translated into several languages and has gathered more than 1,000 signatures.
If you wish to dign the letter, it is here.
Andreas Schleicher, director of PISA, disagreed with their letter and denied their critique. Since it is impossible to draft a response by more than 1,000 people in a timely manner, signers of the letter were invited to respond to Dr. Schleicher on their own.
This is Katie Zahedi’s response.
She writes:
“Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain: PISA and the OECD Agenda”
Andreas Schleicher has responded to an open letter that critiques OECD’s PISA league tables:
http://www.oecdpisaletter.org. Defending the OECD’s grand role in education policy, his response denies the letter’s concern that PISA drives reform toward short term fixes by saying that performance has improved in Germany and Poland. Of course he equates progress with improvement on the PISA, which is precisely the short term fix we decry.
The Open Letter addresses widespread concerns with the PISA. Yong Zhao of the University of Oregon refers to the damaging effects of PISA as: “…an ironic tragedy of the 21st Century born out of ignorance.
While Dr. Schleicher hopefully takes a moment to do a closer read of the open letter, I would like to explain the intent of the critique and counter proposal signed by Heinz-Dieter Meyer and myself.
We were in the audience at Schleicher’s presentation at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in Philadelphia April, 2014. After Schleicher’s presentation of colorful graphics, tracking the purported educational status of nations (based on one test) fellow panel member Martin Carnoy of Stanford explained why the PISA scores may not matter! Heinz-Dieter Meyer drew attention to a profound shift from nation-state level leadership to a global educational governance structure. I lamented his cavalier construction of variables, i.e., in which he provided correlations to a tag he referred to as “similar social background” in discussing counties as different as Luxembourg, Ghana and the U.S. One can assume he was referring to a rudimentary conception of students’ local economic status by deciles.
The meeting ended with an incredulous group of scholars and professionals congregated at the back of the hall discussing the lack of substantive insight, while alone at the front of the room on his laptop, was a “Great and Powerful Oz” …the curtain parted, sitting in the gray hue of a conference screen gone blank of its colorful graphs and reductionist explanations. A scholar from Shanghai (whose question was brushed aside by Schleicher) restated his unresolved concern: “what if by focusing on what we can measure, we end up marginalizing things that cannot be measured?”
The motivation of the letter was that I felt sorry for a man, who unfortunate destiny had placed at the helm of an ill-informed, grand design. The open letter is an extended helping hand, reaching out to improve understanding of where we are headed with education policy. In inviting my colleagues to write, and/or attempt to meet with Schleicher, Meyer initially chuckled, but thankfully took it on. The letter was reviewed by peers Diane Ravitch (NYU) and Stephen Mucher (Bard College) and signed by over a thousand others whose educational homes have been spinning in PISA’s cyclone… and who are clicking their heels in hopes of leaving the strange land of testing Oz.
Katie Zahedi
You are up early and blogging again. Amazing.
I signed the letter. OECD’s PISA tests create news that overwhelms OECDs more interesting reports on the relative status of a nation’s economic well-being, also reported as league tables, but with discussions of labor markets, health and welfare, the stability of institutions and their trustworthiness, and so on. Not much of that contextual information comes into play as the PISA game gets played. The league table placement of the USA took a big hit with the economic meltdown. I have yet to see the headlong rush to a “fix” for that, or much punishing of the perpetrators. But PISA tests and the drumbeat for always being numero uno have played a big role in the unrelenting bashing of teachers and the absurd rush that produced Race to the Top. I am really thrilled that this letter drew a response, even if the PISA-master does not choose to understand the damage the tests are doing to education on an international scale.
Economically productive innovation has little bearing on test scores in school. For a list of factors that do contribute see: The Global Innovation Index at http://www.smartkpis.com/blog/2010/01/17/the-innovation-capacity-index/ See the role of investment in R&D at http://www.oecd.org/document/5/0,3343,en_41462537_41454856_45085509_1_1_1_1,00.html
Who are the perpetrators* who should be punished? The government regulators who required banks to offer sub-prime mortgages or risk being called racist?
* “The league table placement of the USA took a big hit with the economic meltdown. I have yet to see the headlong rush to a “fix” for that, or much punishing of the perpetrators.”
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What does a “global educational governance structure” mean? Last I knew the one worlders were not yet in power.
I have posted this before but it bears repeating given the echoing comment by the “scholar from Shanghai” at the end of the penultimate paragraph of the posting. The three quotations concern the general nature of standardized testing (especially the high-stakes kind) and apply with equal force to PISA:
From Jim Horn and Denise Wilburn, THE MISMEASURE OF EDUCATION (2013), pp. 1, 55, and 147:
“What was once educationally significant, but difficult to measure, has been replaced by what is insignificant and easy to measure. So now we test how well we have taught what we do not value.” — Art Costa, professor emeritus at Cal State-Fullerton
“Initially, we use data as a way to think hard about difficult problems, but then we over rely on data as a way to avoid thinking hard about difficult problems. We surrender our better judgment and leave it to the algorithm.” —Joe Flood, author of THE FIRES
“When the right thing can only be measured poorly, it tends to cause the wrong thing to be measured, only because it can be measured well. And it is often much worse to have a good measurement of the wrong thing—especially when, as is so often the case, the wrong thing will in fact be used as an indicator of the right thing—than to have poor measurements of the right thing.” — John Tukey, mathematician, Bell Labs & Princeton University
I also recommend the book to viewers.
😎
Thank you for this recommendation, KrazyTA
See,
PISA, Power, and Policy
the emergence of global educational governance
Edited by HEINZ-DIETER MEYER & AARON BENAVOT
2013 OXFORD STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE EDUCATION
ISBN 978-1-873927-96-0
Reblogged this on Schools of Thought Hudson Valley, NY and commented:
If you have mot already done so, please consider signing the letter to challenge PISA.