Personal memories of the development of united states participation in large scale international assessment surveys

Abstract

This essay reflects on my personal experiences conducting international comparative statistical studies in education as an employee of two U.S. federal statistical agencies between 1981 and 2011. Before 1982, the U.S. government involvement with large-scale international studies had been sporadic. By 1990, as a result of my initial support for the IEA, two U.S. federal agencies, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) supported research and development projects that raised the quality of international statistical comparisons on student achievement. My goal was to enhance existing international surveys so that the resulting statistical analyses would be perceived as a valid measurement of the performance of elementary and secondary students in multiple countries.