Another Nation at Risk?

Abstract

ON 4 December 2001 Germany took massive blow to its national ego. PISA, the Program of International Student Assessment that was cobbled together by the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, delivered the haymaker. OECD tested 15-year-olds in 32 nations -- 28 OECD countries and four others (Brazil, Latvia, Liechtenstein, and the Russian Federation). American students were average in all three areas tested -- reading, math, and science. Our media yawned. But to the German press, it was catastrophe. German students ranked 21st in reading, 20th in math, and 20th in science. (American ranks were 15th, 19th, and 14th respectively). On some subtests, German students ranked as low as 25th. The actual scores of German students did not fall that far below those of U.S. students -- 10 points in reading, three in math, and 12 in science on 600-point scale (recall that ranks and scores are different). However, German scores fell significantly below the OECD average on all three measures, while the U.S. did not significantly differ from that average on any measure. Dummkopf! trumpeted the headline in The Economist. Debacle, declared the Suddeutsche Zeitung in Munich. Are German Students Stupid? asked the cover of the weekly Der Spiegel. Fix Our Schools, demanded the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The German media spewed more than 700 pages of print, hurling accusations and trying to figure out what had happened. (This information and most of the other commentary from the foreign press that I'm reporting here comes from Jason Tarsch, an economist for the British Department for Education and Skills, who spent fair amount of his spare time circulating PISA- related articles and translating those in German and French.) Americans might be forgiven if they experienced little shiver of schadenfreude at Germany's angst, along with strong sense of deja vu. It looked like Germany might be a nation at risk. Actually, it was worse for Germany. Nation at Risk was published here in 1983, capping 30 years of criticism. Until PISA, Germans thought they were the best. Although they had lots of information to the contrary from How in the World Do Students Read? and from the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, these outcomes had apparently been glossed over. Not so with PISA. Now you have it, said OECD PISA director Andreas Schleicher. the land of poets and philosophers, is struck down. Various German officials called the results disastrous, a scandal, and totally unacceptable. Analysts pointed to Germany's short school day, to weak early education, and, especially, to Germany's system of tracking students from age 10. Many analysts believed that tracking contributed to the vast difference in performance by students from different socioeconomic strata. Although performance was associated with wealth in all nations, the relationship was strongest in Germany. Commentators claimed that grouping by performance at age 10 inevitably tracked students by social class as well and ensured the huge gaps seen at age 15. Analysts also held tracking responsible for the gap between high and low readers in Germany, the largest in the study. The the ratio of the best (top 10%) readers' scores to the worst (bottom 10%) readers' scores, was largest for Germany, almost 1.8. The U.S. registered the third-worst Inequality Index, meaning that our best readers were far superior to our worst. Finland, Japan, and Canada had the smallest Inequality Indices. In some areas, low scores clustered among students from other nations. Foreign students make up as much as 75% of the student body in some urban schools. No one seemed to take into account the language capabilities of these students. Said one teacher, A German-speaking teacher cannot do much in the way of leading when children talk to one another in Turkish or Arabic. …