On Tuesday, the results of the international test called PISA will be released.

Years ago, no one paid much attention to the release of international test scores, but now they have become an occasion for official moaning, groaning, and hyperventilating. It is time to remember the story about “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” Will we hear more declarations that the latest results are “our Sputnik moment”? Will we hear more predictions that our economy is headed for disaster because some other nation has higher test scores? You can count on it.

Richard Rothstein and Martin Carnoy write here that the U.S. Department of Education released early copies of the PISA results only to organizations that can be counted on to echo the Obama administration’s official line that American schools are failing and declining and unable to compete in the global competition.

They write:

Typically, The U.S. Department of Education (ED) is given an advance look at test score data by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and issues press releases with conclusions based on its preliminary review of the results. The OECD itself also provides a publicized interpretation of the results. This year, ED and the OECD are planning a highly orchestrated event, “PISA Day,” to manipulate coverage of this release.

It is usual practice for research organizations (and in some cases, the government) to provide advance copies of their reports to objective journalists. That way, journalists have an opportunity to review the data and can write about them in a more informed fashion. Sometimes, journalists are permitted to share this embargoed information with diverse experts who can help the journalists understand possibly alternative interpretations.

In this case, however, the OECD and ED have instead given their PISA report to selected advocacy groups that can be counted on, for the most part, to echo official interpretations and participate as a chorus in the official release.¹ These are groups whose interpretation of the data has typically been aligned with that of the OECD and ED—that American schools are in decline and that international test scores portend an economic disaster for the United States, unless the school reform programs favored by the administration are followed.

The Department’s co-optation of these organizations in its official release is not an attempt to inform but rather to manipulate public opinion. Those with different interpretations of international test scores will see the reports only after the headlines have become history.

Which organizations got early copies of the PISA data? The organizations who have been provided with advance copies of this government report, and that are participating in the public release are: The Alliance for Excellent Education, Achieve, ACT, America Achieves, the Asia Society, the Business Roundtable, the Council of Chief State School Officers, the College Board, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, and the National Center on Education and the Economy. These organizations and their leaders have a history of bemoaning Americans’ performance on international tests and predicting tragic consequences for the nation that will follow.

Rothstein and Carnoy remind us that thirty years ago a federal government report called “A Nation at Risk” warned of our dire peril, and that report has since been proven wrong:

Advocates participating in Tuesday’s staged PISA Day release include several who, a quarter century ago, warned that America’s inadequate education system and workforce skills imperiled our competitiveness and future. Their warnings were followed by a substantial acceleration of American productivity growth in the mid-1990s, and by an American economy whose growth rate surpassed the growth rates of countries that were alleged to have better prepared and more highly skilled workers.

Today, threats to the nation’s future prosperity come much less from flaws in our education system than from insufficiently stimulative fiscal policies which tolerate excessive unemployment, wasting much of the education our young people have acquired; an outdated infrastructure: regulatory and tax policies that reward speculation more than productivity; an over-extended military; declining public investment in research and innovation; a wasteful and inefficient health care system; and the fact that typical workers and their families, no matter how well educated, do not share in the fruits of productivity growth as they once did. The best education system we can imagine can’t succeed if we ignore these other problems.

We don’t plan to comment on tomorrow’s release, except to caution that any conclusions drawn quickly from such complex data should not be relied upon. We urge commentators to await our and other careful analyses of the new PISA results before accepting the headline-generating assertions by government officials and their allies upon the release of the national summary report.

Wouldn’t it be refreshing if some of these organizations asked the obvious question: Why does the United States continue to thrive and prosper even though our scores on international tests are not at the top? Why was “A Nation at Risk” so terribly wrong in its predictions of doom and gloom to come if we didn’t raise those international test scores?

– See more at: http://www.epi.org/blog/pisa-day-ideological-hyperventilated-exercise/#sthash.mlTQYkwp.dpuf

The reader writes: “One thing I have repeated heard in this
‘Ed Reform’ talk is that American kids need to ‘catch up’ with kids
from other countries because we are behind in those international
tests. I grew up in China, where there is very rigorous curriculum;
where frequent testing and ranking of students is part of a
student’s life the moment the child walks into a school; where
students do perform well in internationally-benchmarked tests. “Is
that what some ed reformers here are going after? If so, I would
suggest that they take a look at how lost and uninspired to learn
college freshman year students are in China; how students, even at
very young ages, cheat on tests so that they can rank higher in
their class and consequently get to better schools; how many
people, like myself, still have nightmares about not being able to
finish all the questions on a test, even in our adulthood. “Go
visit a Chinese airport, or bus stop, or subway station. See if you
can spot people reading while waiting. Likely not – because
people’s desire to read, to explore, to think and keep learning was
killed long ago, inside the schools, by those tests…”

A reader who works for an international agency sent me this essay about a pressing problem. For obvious reasons, he will remain anonymous, but his sources are cited.

Learning Metrics Taskforce: If you can’t teach the students of poor countries, just test them!

Much has been written about testing problems and corporate interests in the US. Could similar forces be operating outside the US? Here is a story that few readers probably know.

In poor countries education is mainly for the middle class. Most citizens of countries such as Rwanda, Congo, or Papua New Guinea have traditionally remained illiterate. In 1990 a worldwide initiative was launched, called “Education for All”. It was led by the World Bank and has evolved into a multi-billion dollar fund. About 55 low-income governments have received grants to build schools, buy books, and recruit teachers. Parents desperately want to send children to school, so when schools open, they quickly fill up. But there is a glitch: In very poor circumstances, children fail to learn. A World Bank study estimated in 2012 that only 67% of students in Subsaharan Africa finish primary school and of those who finish, 25% are illiterate.

The ‘learning crisis’, as it is called, has multiple causes. My partner and I spent about 12 years teaching for a charity organization, and we witnessed them first hand. Urban classes have 60-120 students with children seated on the floor. Teachers are often absent, may not know how to teach, and they are never supervised. Corrupt officials often demand bribes, and textbooks are stolen before they get to schools. Children are malnourished and hungry. Not much is taught under these conditions.

Donors such as the World Bank ought to have a good handle on this reality. But their staff hardly visit classrooms. They prefer the company of high officials who send their children to private schools and have private agendas. Most world bankers are economists, so they love the virtual reality of datasets and glossy publications. Incredibly, the donors’ response to scant instruction is not better teaching but better testing. Governments are encouraged to develop learning benchmarks, test students against them, and then figure out how to teach children to achieve the benchmarks.

The triumph of testing over teaching was definitively proclaimed through the “Learning Metrics Task Force” deliberations. The prestigious Brookings Institute conducted a large-scale consultation that involved 1700 staff members of 30 organizations. They were asked to define what children should learn in school and how the learning should be measured. Dozens of organizer staff flew to exotic destinations like Dubai and Bellagio, Italy to deliberate on the findings.

The report was formally launched on September 24, 2013 at the 68^th session of the United Nations General Assembly. [click here http://globaleducationfirst.org/2996.htm see entire report here http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports/2013/09/learning-metrics-task-force-universal-learning

The report affirms the need to take immediate action to ensure children’s right to quality education. Nevertheless, it says nothing about the practical obstacles to learning such as corruption, harassment, book thefts, and failure to teach. In fact the word “teach” is not mentioned even once. Students are somehow expected to learn through “opportunities to develop competencies across seven domains of learning, starting in early childhood through adolescence.” To achieve this, a small set of key learning indicators will be tracked globally, such as literacy and numeracy. Countries will obtain technical help to diagnose the quality of their assessment systems, convene stakeholders to determine priorities, identify inequities, and make the appropriate policy changes.

To justify this view, the task force introduces the concept that assessment is a Public Good (pp. 12, 32). No country should be denied the opportunity to test students just because they cannot afford to. Parents and other stakeholders should become advocates of testing (p. 15) and for increased funding for testing (p. 17).

To help children quickly there is not a moment to lose. The task force will meet in November 2013 and develop a plan for moving forward. Launch events will be held in at least 15 cities around the world from September through November 2013, to make stakeholders aware of the test benefits.

The “learning metrics” task force seems so out of touch with reality that its main recommendation is a “Global Paradigm Shift” – from mere investment in access to “access plus learning”. Really, in 2013? Over the last 20 years piles of studies have documented learning failures, while numerous UNESCO workshops have taken place on quality improvement. With the same surreal touch, the document omits references to the large-scale testing that has already taken place. Since the 1990s the kids have been fed alphabet-soup tests such as PASEC, SACMEC, TIMSS, EGRA, EGMA, ASER, Uwezo, and other tests (see www.eddataglobal.org). And practically no cases are known of governments that put test results to good uses and improved outcomes.

So why did the Brookings Institution compromise its standards for this initiative? Why not form a teaching-for-poverty task force? Cynics point to money, but experience with poor schools leads to some sobering decisions. Donors mainly want to see activities and feel optimistic for the future. The most productive activity is to help schools teach students, but it is time-consuming, sometimes dangerous and often frustrating. Donors may become disappointed and pull out. By contrast, testing is a winner. Field work takes just a few weeks, and analyses can be done from the comfort of air conditioned offices. The staff involved get invited to international conferences, pad their resumes, get promoted. It’s up to the host governments to use test results for policy improvement.

As the task force rushes into implementation, the only certain outcome is consultant welfare. Testing companies are asked to donate time (p. 35), but seven domains in all countries of the world amount to huge numbers of tests. USAID and other donors have spent millions on testing in the past, so consultant companies and associated nonprofits are preparing for a windfall. Our boss is also optimistic.

The smell of money may be one reason why no one has criticized the report publicly. The people who are building careers and retirement funds from money destined to educate poor kids will strongly argue that they are doing the very best they can for them. Anyway many countries are slowly rising out of poverty, and eventually the poor will turn up educated. It may not be exactly ‘Education for All’, but ‘Testing for All” is considered acceptable progress.