How Does PISA Put the World at Risk (Part 4): Misleading the World
29 MARCH 2014 143 NO COMMENT
Part 4
China’s poorest beat our best pupils—The Telegraph (UK), 2-17-2014
Children of Shanghai cleaners better at math than kids of Israeli lawyers—Haaretz (Israel), 2-19-2014
Cleaners’ children in China beat kids of US, UK professionals at maths: study—NDTV (India), 2-18-2014
Children of Chinese janitors outscore wealthy Canadians in global exams—The Globe and Mail(Canada), 2-19- 2014
Children of Shanghai cleaners better at math than kids of Israeli lawyers—Haaretz (Israel), 2-19-2014
Cleaners’ children in China beat kids of US, UK professionals at maths: study—NDTV (India), 2-18-2014
Children of Chinese janitors outscore wealthy Canadians in global exams—The Globe and Mail(Canada), 2-19- 2014
These are some of the most recent sensational headlines generated by PISA with a 4-page report entitledDo parents’ occupations have an impact on student performance released in February 2014. These headlines exemplify the secret of PISA’s great success as a masterful illusionist: effective misdirection of attention by exploiting human instinct for competition.
From the start, the entire PISA enterprise has been designed to capitalize on the intense nationalistic concern for global competitiveness by inducing strong emotional responses from the unsuspecting public, gullible politicians, and sensation-seeking media. Virtually all PISA products, particularly its signature product—the league tables, are intended to show winners and losers, in not only educational policies and practices of the past, but more important, in capacity for global competition in the future. While this approach has made PISA an extremely successful global enterprise, it has misled the world down a path of self-destruction, resulting in irrational policies and practices that are more likely to squander precious resources and opportunities than enhancing capacity for future prosperity.
Take the report on the relationship between parents’ occupations and student achievement as an example, instead of highlighting its main finding—the well-known fact that family background has a strong impact on student achievement—to call attention to the issue of social-economic inequity in the world, the report chose to dramatize the finding that students of parents in “elementary occupations” in Shanghai and Singapore
