The Great German School Turnaround
The European country managed to raise test scores while reducing educational inequality. But with the dramatic influx of migrants, will its success last?
To make a good national school system, a country needs to help its most disadvantaged students. So says Andreas Schleicher, the man in charge of the most authoritative international test. “It’s the capacity of those systems to invest in those students from disadvantaged backgrounds” says Schleicher, the education director for the OECD, which administers the triennial Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) among its roughly three dozen member countries. “What those education systems do is attract the best teachers and best principals to most challenging classrooms and schools.” Moreover, he notes, “reducing inequality is not just a social imperative but an economic imperative.”
While U.S. students have scored in the bottom half of nations on the PISA and have made no significant gains over 10 years, Germany—Schleicher’s home country—has managed to increase test scores while decreasing inequality in its school system. In fact, Germany was one of just three countries surveyed by the OECD that reduced inequality while raising math scores between 2003 to 2012, the other two being Mexico and Turkey.
And Germany has, notably, made these strides without closing or threatening to cut funding from its poorest-performing schools—a tactic used by the United States during the same time period. Germany now ranks 20th for math proficiency; the U.S., meanwhile, is 49th, just behind Turkey. (Some critics question the validity of PISA scores as a tool for gauging proficiency, but they offer the only reliable and consistent means of comparing achievement across countries.)
Germany’s reform efforts included the creation of national standards and standards-based tests for students in grades three and eight, which sounds much like the U.S. approach. But unlike the U.S., Germany doesn’t penalize schools for poor performance, nor does it publicize school-level test scores. Experts say its focus instead on providing school-based support and monitoring and targeting Germany’s Approach to School Reform: Standards and Testing Without Any Penalties - The Atlantic:
