Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: PISA -- The World Cup of Testing

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: PISA -- The World Cup of Testing:

PISA -- The World Cup of Testing

It's that time again -- the silly season when the countries of the world have their schools rated on the basis of the PISA tests. It's like the World Cup of standardized testing. And like the World Cup, the U.S. continues to wind up in the middle of the pack, somewhere behind Ireland and Poland. Look for a new round of racial theories about Asians being smarter, and lots pissing and moaning about "failing schools" and "bad teachers" and the need for more privatization of public ed.

While it's premature to draw any deep conclusions from the latest round of PISA testing, I think I can safely predict that once again the scores will show that wealthy and well-resourced U.S. schools scores right at the top of the heap while the poorer resource-starved ones score right around the bottom. 

“The United States’ standings haven’t improved dramatically because we as a nation haven’t addressed the main cause of our mediocre PISA performance – the effects of poverty on students, says NEA Pres. Dennis Van Roekel.

“Our students from well-to-do families have consistently done well on the PISA assessments. For students who live in poverty, however, it’s a different story.