It's the Same Old Song

Abstract

IN early December 2007, a reporter at a daily paper alerted me to a press conference to be jointly given by Business Roundtable, National Governors Association, ED in'08, Asia Society, Council of Chief State School Officers, and Alliance for Excellence in Education. The occasion was to be release of latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) data. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), PISA overseeing agency, would be represented by Andreas Schleicher, its lead education official. As it turned out, didn't attend, but later in day checked in with reporter to see what had missed. I didn't make PISA event, he said. I'm getting tired of these hand-wringing sessions. Me too. We're coming up on 25th anniversary of A Nation at Risk, but judging by critics, schools have not improved one iota. Still, World Economic Forum (WEF) just ranked U.S. first in world in global competitiveness among 131 nations. The WEF had ranked U.S. sixth for 2006-07, but when it recalculated figures using its new methodology, U.S. came in first then, too. Nevertheless, there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth at press conference. Our students' performance today is best indicator of our competitiveness tomorrow, said Raymond Scheppach, executive director of National Governors Association, once again drawing that causal link for which there is no evidence. is Olympics of academics, said Bob Wise of Alliance for Excellence in Education, formerly governor of West Virginia. The reason for all unhappiness? The U.S. finished behind 23 of 30 OECD countries in mathematics and behind 16 of 30 in science. The PISA reading scores were not available because OECD discovered that U.S. booklets had been misprinted and had badly misdirected test-takers. The Washington Post seemed almost bored as it noted that the ranking of U.S. students in math and science is about same as it was in 2003. Let me remind readers that even two of major persons whom Susan Ohanian labeled standardistas, Checker Finn and Diane Ravitch, declared fervently that all this emphasis on math and science and high-stakes, low-level testing is misguided. Bring back liberal arts, they say. And so do I. Reading scores for 9-year-olds did arrive in form of latest results from PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study). American students scored same as they had on previous administration in 2001: 540 this time; 542 then. America Idles on International Reading Test was a typical headline. This wasn't good enough for Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, who commented, Clearly, as world becomes flatter, it's becoming more competitive. We need to do better than simply keep pace. Thus Spellings placed economic fate of nation squarely on backs of our fourth-graders. Looking past fictitious implications of results for global competitiveness, scores are still something of a problem for Spellings. With regard to National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), secretary has been crowing for years that over last five years, our 9-year-olds have made more progress in reading than in previous 28 combined. She credited No Child Left Behind, of course, but overlooked fact that, for much of that period, NCLB didn't exist. So scores from PIRLS must be a terrible embarrassment. By 2006, we'd had years of NCLB and years of Reading First. The secretary issued a short press release noting that the U.S. score has not changed measurably from 2001. While we're seeing progress under No Child Left Behind, we can do better. Spellings has never been known for her strong grip on reality, but this is evidence of denial. If we've seen more progress on National Assessment of Educational Progress than ever, then shouldn't we be seeing something in way of an increase on PIRLS? …