PISA test scores? Wait a minute!

I read the following on Diane Ravitch's blog: "Let others have the higher test scores. I prefer to bet on the creative, can-do spirit of the American people, on its character, persistence, ambition, hard work, and big dreams, none of which are ever measured or can be measured by standardized tests like PISA."  I respect Ms. Ravitch for her credentials.  For a long time she supported standardized testing, teacher accountability and school choice.  After serving as an assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Education during the Bush administration and as a member of the National Assessment Governing Board that supervised national testing she had an epiphany about teaching, learning, and assessment.  She realized she had been wrong.

PISA is the Programme for International Student Assessment.  This year's test results are in, and American hair is on fire.  "Stagnant!" declared NPR and other news outlets.  

But is our position in the middle of the pack truly something to be alarmed about?  I don't think so, and here's why.

A test is a snapshot on any given moment on any given day.  A test like the PISA (try it for yourself here) only measures things that can be measured - questions that have a right and wrong answer.  A test like this cannot measure creativity, critical and innovative thinking, problem-solving abilities or people skills. 

It's little wonder that US scores rank behind those of Asian countries.  First of all, many of those countries simply do not include scores of all students. Special education students are not tested (and may not even be in the schools), neither are those who are not proficient in the testing language.  In the US, we test them all (special education students and students who do not have proficiency in English) and include all their scores, even if (in my opinion) is is not appropriate to do so.  To compare our scores as if they were apples-to-apples is a flawed comparison at best, and should push readers toward a careful analysis of the testing sample.  Secondly, the type of educational environment in Asian countries that produces the high test scores is one that is not likely to be embraced in the US.  Regimented learning, long school days, pressure from parents and stressed out students may be a stereotype, but it comes from recognizable and identifiable characteristics of the educational systems in those countries.

Think for a moment about the 21st Century skills that students need and that we hear so much about.  Employers are looking to hire people who have them, and teachers are being evaluated on how they teach them, but are they - CAN they - be assessed or measured on a test like the PISA?  Leadership, ethics, accountability, adaptability, personal productivity, personal responsibility, people skills, self-direction, and social responsibility all appear on the rubric I use when I observe teachers in their classrooms as their instructional coach.  You will notice that these skills are NOT content in and of themselves, yet they are critical components of success in life and success in employment.  These are "soft skills" and as far as I know, there is no standardized test for them.

Let's return to Diane Ravitch's thoughts about standardized tests in general, and the PISA test specifically: "We measure whether students can pick the right answer to a test question. But what we cannot measure matters more. The scores tell us nothing about students’ imagination, their drive, their ability to ask good questions, their insight, their inventiveness, their creativity. If we continue the policies of the Bush and Obama administrations in education, we will not only NOT get higher scores (the Asian nations are so much better at this than we are), but we will crush the very qualities that have given our nation its edge as a cultivator of new talent and new ideas for many years."

Click here to read Ms. Ravitch's entire post.