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Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Daily Kos: What Do International Tests Really Show About U. S. Student Performance?

Daily Kos: What Do International Tests Really Show About U. S. Student Performance?:


What Do International Tests Really Show About U. S. Student Performance?

That is the title of this report, being released at Noon today by the Economic Policy Institute and co-authored by Martin Carnoy and Richard Rothstein.
I was allowed to see an embargoed version of the report ahead of the official release in order to draft this post about it -  I will be teaching when the embargo is lifted, and this is scheduled to go live automatically.
I asked to see the report both because of the importance of the topic and the credibility of the authors.
Let me start with the authors. Martin Carnoy is a Labor Economist with a special interest in the relationship between the economy and the educational system.  This is especially relevant given how the concerns we so often hear about our educational system are usually phrased in terms of the economic risk to the nation.  Carnoy, besides his work at EPI, holds an endowed chair in the Stanford Graduate School of Education, where he chairs chairs the International and Comparative Education program.  In short, he is one of America's best experts on international comparisons.
Richard Rothstein is senior fellow of the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy at the University of California (Berkeley) School of Law.  He is the author of numerous books on education.  He has