Measuring education: Do we need a plethora of assessment studies or just a single score?

Abstract

The major international large-scale assessments in education prioritize the three core domains such as mathematics, science, and reading, neglecting other important domains such as civic education or computer and information literacy. The present study aims at determining the added value of different international large-scale assessments to evaluating educational systems across the globe. Using country-level data from all recent international assessments by the IEA and the OECD, we conducted a series of correlational analyses and multidimensional scaling to determine the similarities and differences among educational assessments. The findings of this study show that the various measures of achievement correlate to different degrees at country level. While mathematics, science, and reading are the most closely correlated, the correlations with civic education and computer and information literacy are considerably lower. We conclude that subject domains as civic education and computer and information literacy add a significant value to the assessment of education.