Halos, love boats, and the PISA family: understanding contractors’ rationales for carrying out International Large-Scale Assessment contracts

Abstract

ABSTRACT Why are contractors keen to develop, implement, and analyse International Large-Scale Assessments (ILSAs) when they appear to make no financial gains? What, if not monetary profit, makes ILSA contracts so attractive? Almost all ILSA contractors interviewed as part of this project state that their ILSA work is an investment, either in the form of a break-even or a loss contract. This paper discusses why contractors carry out ILSA contracts or donate to ILSAs, analysing 35 interviews with OECD and IEA staff and ILSA contractors and applying policy borrowing and lending theory to non-state actors. Drawing on Brostrom’s (2012) study, this paper identifies contractor rationales on an organizational level that relate to developing improved or new products and processes, gaining access to networks, managing human capital, and creating direct business opportunities. This paper adds a fifth category of individual rationales, whereby contractors are driven by professional opportunities, lifestyles, and emotional bonds that ILSAs provide. What becomes apparent is an innovation rhetoric gap and that ILSAs are a ‘golden door’ to business opportunities. The paper concludes that contractors’ motivations and agendas become encoded in ILSAs as they buy themselves into ILSA networks, thus shaping the way education is measured, understood, and acted upon.