Using machine learning to identify important predictors of school science literacy achievement: evidence from the United States

International Evidence on Expenditures and Class Size: A Review Ludger Wößmann In the United States, evidence abounds on the effects of expenditures and class size on student achievement, but often it is controversial.1 In other parts of the world, hard evidence is not as easy to come by, mostly because of data limitations. But over the years, testing agencies have started to collect data on student performance and family background and on school resources in countries around the world, allowing a look at the association between school resources and student achievement in different international settings. This paper reviews what can be learned from international student achievement tests such as the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) exams in terms of the effects of expenditures and class size on student achievement. Such evidence obviously is of great interest to countries that lack a national data set that allows for empirical analysis, and for many developed countries, evidence comparable to that in the U.S. literature is largely absent. That is true particularly for countries in western Europe; Psacharopoulos claims that "more research has been done on the economics of education in developing countries than in Europe."2 The poor state of European research on educational production is especially disappointing because European evidence would seem to be much more directly comparable to U.S. evidence than would evidence from developing countries, given the relative levels of economic development and educational attainment of the countries involved.3 [End Page 245] The international evidence is also of interest in discussions of the U.S. education system. Because the education systems and levels of educational expenditures in other countries differ from those in the United States, U.S. observers can learn whether resource effects would differ in a differently structured system. Observing resource effects in countries with different levels and distributions of expenditures may also help to distinguish between varying explanations for the U.S. evidence: for example, between technical explanations based on diminishing returns to resource inputs and economic explanations based on the lack of incentives to use resources to enhance student learning effectively.4 Also, as discussed toward the end of this paper, the controversial results from different U.S. studies may in part reflect true heterogeneity in the effect of resources, in that resources may matter in some circumstances but less so in others. Again, the international evidence may prove useful in testing for such heterogeneity, estimating resource effects on comparable data in different countries. A final motivation to look at the international evidence stems from the fact that test scores on previous international cognitive achievement tests conducted between the mid-1960s and early 1990s have been found to be strongly associated with a country's subsequent economic growth and level of economic development.5 That empirical evidence supports recent theories of economic growth that stress the importance of human capital.6 It should be emphasized at the outset that this paper is a review of results from several previous studies on the international evidence on expenditures and class size and that it aims to be both brief and nontechnical. Therefore I present only the main results of leading studies on the topic, discussing technicalities only insofar as it is absolutely necessary to understand the results. In the trade-off between brevity and detail, the review leans strongly toward brevity. For technical details and additional robustness checks, the interested reader is referred to the original sources. The paper first reviews aggregate international evidence on the association between educational expenditures and student performance and then international student-level evidence on the effects of class size. The aggregate evidence considers variation in expenditures and performance both across countries and over time. The micro-evidence presents results of conventional estimates and two quasi-experimental strategies to identify class-size effects—one based on natural cohort fluctuations, the other on rule-induced discontinuities—implemented by using the international data in many countries. The paper closes with a brief analysis of the association between teacher quality and class-size effects, as well as brief conclusions. [End Page 246] The Aggregate Picture This section presents the aggregate picture...

STEM Education intends to have Integrated Learning in the disciplines of Science, Technology, Mathematics and Mathematics to produce critical, innovative and creative students who contribute to the country's development. STEM education has a role not only as a channel to process and produce local skilled workers, even as a leader in the country's development economy. However, STEM education scenarios in Malaysia are dealing with various issues such as the lack of STEM teaching materials, the reduction in the number of students who continue study in STEM-related fields in the middle and tertiary rankings and low achievements in international level markers studies such as the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA ) and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). These issues are related to one of the main challenges, namely STEM learning / teacher teaching quality that is not interesting and consistent and teacher quality in the STEM field. Increasing the quality of STEM learning, the quality of teacher teaching and the quality of teachers needs to be done as one of the proactive steps to strengthen STEM Education. If this effort is not carried out, the dictatorship of the country becomes incompetent in the global ranking and lags behind. This concept paper naturally discusses the issues and challenges of teacher factors in the education of STEM education and so on several reserves and initiatives to overcome the STEM learning challenges / teacher teaching quality that is not interesting and consistent and teacher quality is raised.

A graphically based machine learning approach to predict secondary schools performance in Tunisia

Over the past two decades, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has become an influential actor in the education sector. This has been accomplished, partly, by the administration of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) since 2000. Overall, PISA is intended to inform the public, parents, teachers, and those who run education systems of the status of education in their country. Research shows that policymakers draw on PISA results when they launch and design education reforms. To date, however, we know very little about whether PISA is successfully informing the general public, which is the main sponsor and benefactor of PISA. Using public opinion surveys from the United States and Israel, this chapter examines knowledge and perception of PISA. Recent reports suggest that both countries are in the middle ranks of all countries participating in PISA, with the United States being in the middle ranks of OECD countries and Israel being in the lower ranks of this group. Findings from public opinion surveys reveal three interesting patterns. First, in both countries, the public tend to underestimate how well 15-year olds perform on international standardized tests. Second, college graduates are more likely than those with less education to underestimate the performance of teens on international standardized tests. Third, although the public seems to be misinformed about PISA results, we find considerable public support for PISA and international standardized tests more generally. Implications of the findings for policy and future research in the field of international and comparative education are discussed.

In our age of big data and growing computational power, versatility in data analysis is important. This study presents a flexible way to combine statistics and machine learning for data analysis of a large-scale educational survey. The authors used statistical and machine learning methods to explore German students’ attitudes towards information and communication technology (ICT) in relation to mathematical and scientific literacy measured by the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2015 and 2018. Implementations of the random forest (RF) algorithm were applied to impute missing data and to predict students’ proficiency levels in mathematics and science. Hierarchical linear models (HLM) were built to explore relationships between attitudes towards ICT and mathematical and scientific literacy with the focus on the nested structure of the data. ICT autonomy was an important variable in RF models, and associations between this attitude and literacy scores in HLM were significant and positive, while for other ICT attitudes the associations were negative (ICT in social interaction) or non-significant (ICT competence and ICT interest). The need for further research on ICT autonomy is discussed, and benefits of combining statistical and machine learning approaches are outlined.

Low academic performance in English language among students is usually caused by several factors of which school indices such as school facilities and class size may play a huge role. This study therefore examined the impact of school facilities and class size on students’ academic performance in English language in public secondary schools in Ibadan North Local Government area of Oyo. Two research questions and two hypotheses were raised. Descriptive survey research design was adopted. Study population comprised 1343 senior secondary school three students in ten selected schools in the local government area. Disproportionate to size sampling technique was used to sample 400 students. A self-constructed questionnaire titled: “School Facilities, Class Size and Students’ Academic Performance Questionnaire” (SFCSSAPQ, r = .764)” was used to collect data for the study. Data collected were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The findings showed rare availability level of school facilities for students’ academic performance in English language (x̅ = 1.108). Also, there is a poor state of class size for students’ academic performance in English language (x̅ = 2.802). Hypotheses showed negative significant relationship between school facilities (r = -.347, P< 0.05), class size (r = -.355, P< 0.05) and students’ academic performance in English language. It was concluded that there is a negative impact of school facilities and class size on students’ academic performance in English language. It was recommended among others that government should ensure that school facilities are provided and equipped for improved teaching, learning and academic performance of the students in English language.

ABSTRACTNew evidence presented in this paper shows that existing accounts of Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in developing countries underestimate both progress and inequality because they do not take into account the large proportion of 15–16-year olds who are ineligible for the PISA sampling frame, primarily due to dropout or delay. In such countries, who makes it into PISA (sample eligibility) heavily influences representivity and therefore the interpretation of PISA results. We use PISA in Turkey 2003–2012 as a case study to show how combining measures of access (from the Turkish Demographic and Health Surveys) and learning outcomes (from PISA) can account for changes in the underlying population. We find the percentage of 15–16-year olds reaching Level 2 in PISA is up to twice as large as that reflected in official PISA reports. These findings have strong implications for inter-country and inter-temporal comparisons using PISA, particularly for developing countries.

Non-cognitive factors are considered critical aspects in shaping students' academic achievement. This study aims to analyze and explore the mechanisms of the influence of non-cognitive factors on 15-year-old students' abilities in China and the United States. Based on the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2018 education dataset, the Classification and Regression Tree (CART) model identifies and explains the factors. The study finds that there are 11 most influential common features in China and 9 in the United States. The two countries have 5 common features, the meta-cognition assess credibility, summarizing text ability, PISA test difficulty perception, science learning time, and school lessons numbers per week. Family economic status also impacts personal ability. Regarding subject characteristics, attitude towards failure is the determinant of reading and mathematics. Cooperation and competition among students help to improve mathematics and science. Furthermore, the comparison between the two countries concludes that self-awareness, family economic status, and school learning environment are critical to personal ability. The study concludes that it is necessary to foster a sense of healthy competition among students at the school level and provide more attention to students with low family socioeconomic status to improve their abilities. Keywords: machine learning approach; non-cognitive factors; PISA 2018; personal ability

The OECD Programme for International Student (PISA) is probably the most prominent signpost for the internationalization of educational policy. The PISA reports on the performance of secondary school students have become an important factor for educational policy-making in the developed world. In some states PISA has spurred more educational reforms than anything before it during the last decades. What is more, PISA succeeded in shifting approach and focus in a most sensitive area of domestic policy touching on social justice and the self-understanding of the citizenry: Because of PISA, policy-making in the field of school education changed from normative, input-oriented reasoning to comparative, empirical, output-oriented analysis. The international plane succeeded in establishing itself as indispensable in a field thus far essentially conceived as domestic.PISA owes its impact on educational policy to a mode of which we call governance by It describes mechanisms which impact on a given policy field by shaping the cognitive framework of policy-making through the collection, processing and dissemination of information. International and supranational institutions more and more often take recourse to by information. This article explores the repercussions of by information for international law in an approach that stresses the publicness of public international law and the role of international institutional law in legally framing global governance. Thus far, these questions have been hardly explored, in spite of the enormous impact of PISA on national policy. We hypothesize that this is because the knowledge and experience of international lawyers relate mostly to international treaties and other binding legal instruments. Governance by information, by contrast, determines society indirectly through which establish or contribute to the cognitive setting within which policy-makers operate. But since no legal obligations are imposed upon states or individuals, it escapes the established perspective of international lawyers, just as many other instruments, actors and processes of global do.In the article, we first provide an overview of PISA and its legal framework (II). Thereafter, we explain why PISA should be considered an exercise of public authority and why it therefore needs a solid public law framework. This part develops a concept of international public authority that focuses on the social relevance of official acts and their impact on individual freedom (III). Third, we explore on a theoretical level how a legal framework could be established for new forms of public authority. In the tradition of German and Italian public law scholarship we suggest the doctrinal construction of instruments (Handlungsformen). This doctrinal construction does not rest on the belief that legal concepts automatically evoke legitimacy. Rather, it stresses the communicative function of legal doctrine, which provides a stable basis for the exercise of authority while at the same time serving as a forum for contestation (IV). In the following part, we construct and propose a standard instrument called Policy Assessment (Politikbewertung) which is designed to grasp the thrust of PISA and similar policies in a legally significant manner (V). Subsequently, the legal regime of National Policy is developed by identifying basic legal elements within the legal framework of PISA which we deem instrumental for the legitimacy and effective functioning of this standard instrument. Those elements relate to the mandate on which National Policy needs to be based, the respect for scientific standards and the representativeness of expertise, access to the assessment data, and national ownership of the assessment results. After a critical appraisal of these elements, we consider the repercussions of the legal regime of National Policy thus established for other international institutions venturing in the area of education. The example of PISA demonstrates that by information is based on a quite elaborate legal framework. Standard are a useful doctrinal category for abstracting basic legal elements and principles from this legal framework, which adds to the legitimacy and effectiveness of the authority thus exercised. This abstraction also enables criticism from various theoretical vantage points. Moreover, the establishment of standard gives policy-makers in international institutions a resource for transposing this type of to other issue areas. Once such a legal regime is sufficiently complex to ensure legitimacy and efficiency, it might be applied to other areas. In this respect, doctrinal conceptualization has a rationalizing and clarifying effect.Lastly, we see National Policy as a valuable tool for holding national governments accountable for their performance. As performance has an impact on the legitimacy of public authority, it would be worthwhile to consider to what extent national governments might be obliged de lege ferenda to expose themselves to such accountability mechanisms. As states are less and less able to meet the needs of a globalized world, and as their citizens and economies must compete on worldwide markets, the legitimacy of the state-based structure of the international legal order might fade if states do not continue to perform on a high level.

Opportunity to Learn and Students from Economically Disadvantages Homes: Implications for School Leaders Through an Examination of Talis 2013

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4—Quality Education—emphasizes inclusive, equitable, and lifelong learning opportunities for all. In line with this global objective, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), administered every three years by the OECD, evaluates the competencies of 15-year-old students across participating education systems. PISA has become a key benchmark for governments, researchers, and educators in evaluating educational quality and policy effectiveness. However, country rankings are shaped not only by classroom instruction but also by broader social, economic, and systemic factors. This paper investigates two broad sets of influences on PISA performance. Structural factors refer to long-term conditions embedded within education systems, including socioeconomic background, funding, teacher qualifications, and curriculum design. Emerging factors, by contrast, are more recent interventions that aim to accelerate learning outcomes—most notably the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in education and school-based mental health support. By examining both sets of factors together, this study seeks to provide a comprehensive explanation for differences in PISA outcomes across 81 countries. In particular, it highlights how countries with robust economic conditions, effective teacher support, and targeted innovation in AI and mental health perform better. Understanding these dynamics is crucial for identifying best practices, designing effective education policies, and improving learning outcomes, especially in contexts such as the Philippines, where PISA scores remain among the lowest. This study also contributes to filling research gaps by incorporating AI maturity and mental health interventions—two underexplored drivers—into the analysis of global educational outcomes.

This study determined school facilities and class size as predictors of students’ academic performance in public secondary schools in Ogun-East Senatorial District, Nigeria. The study adopted the descriptive research design of the survey type. The population comprised 532 teachers of four core subjects and 33,162 students in 133 public junior secondary schools in 9 Education Zones in Ogun-East Senatorial District. A sample size of 212 teachers and 2,073 students of JS3 for the 2022/2023 academic session were selected using a multi-stage sampling procedure. Student samples were selected from intact classes. Three validated research instruments titled: School Facilities Assessment Checklist (r=.82), Subject Teacher Class Size Inventory (r=.95) and Students’ Academic Achievement Tests (r=.76) were used for data collection. The research questions were analysed using percentage, mean and standard deviation. The hypotheses were tested using correlation and multiple regression analysis at .05 alpha level. Findings showed that the condition of school facilities available for use in 73.6% of public secondary schools was poor. The nature of class size was majorly large in 62.3% schools. There was a significant composite contribution of school facilities and class size to students' academic performance (F2, 250 = 43.858; p < .05). There was a significant relative contribution of school facilities (β= 0.704; t= 7.701) and class size (β= -0.200; t= -2.185) to students’ academic performance. The study concluded that school facilities and class size combined are strong predictors of students’ academic performance. The study recommends that the existing school facilities should be expanded to reduce overcrowded classrooms in public secondary schools.

본 연구에서는 대표적인 국제역량평가인 국제학업성취도평가(Programme for International Student Assessment: 이하 PISA)의 금융소양 영역에 대해 소개함으로써 경제교육 관련자들의 관심을 촉구하고, 이에 대한 우리나라와 주변국의 적극적인 참여를 요청하고 있다. PISA 금융소양 영역은 학생들이 오늘날 사회에서 직면하는 금융 분야의 문제 상황에 대해 자신이 가지고 있는 지식을 어떻게 활용할 수 있는가를 평가하는 것에 초점이 맞추어져있다. 우리나라는 예산의 부담, 시행 상의 어려움, 주요 비교대상국의 부재 등의 문제로 PISA 금융소양 평가에 참여하지 않고 있다. 하지만 PISA 금융소양 평가에 참여함으로써 얻을 수 있는 이득은 적지 않다. PISA 결과에 나타난 국가 내 심층 분석 자료는 교육 정책 개선의 방향을 제시하며, 국가 간 비교 자료는 정책을 구체화시킬 수 있는 아이디어를 제공한다. 또한 경제교육과 정이 지식뿐만 아니라 실제 경제생활과 관련된 문제 해결 능력이나 지식 적용 능력을 길러줄 수 있는 방향으로 개선될 수 있도록 하는 데 도움을 줄 수 있다. 마지막으로 금융교육에 대해 미온적인 일반의 인식을 개선하고 학교 및 학교 밖 금융 및 경제교육을 활성화할 수 있는 계기로 삼을 수 있다는 점에서 의미가 있다.This study introduced the financial literacy assessment in PISA(Programme for International Student Assessment), one of the best international competence assessment, and called for the concerns and interests of the authorities concerned with financial education as well as the participation of Korea and neighboring countries in PISA. The financial literacy assessment in PISA focuses on how to assess the students utilizing their knowledge to address the financial problems they face daily. Korea currently does not participate in this PISA assessment due to several reasons: budget constraints for the payment of participant dividends, class absence, loss of focus due to additional assessment hour, and the absence of comparative countries. Nonetheless, this study believe that the following benefits by introducing and participating in the financial literacy assessment in PISA. The national data analysis of PISA test results can suggest the ways to improve financial education policies, while inter-national analysis will provide us of the more specific ideas to realize those policies. It also can help to reform the national curriculum on financial and economic education to cultivate not only economic knowledge but competencies for economic problem-solving and knowledge application in an actual economic life. Lastly, it can be an opportunity for us to invigorate social as well as school financial education, and to modify the public indifferences toward financial education.

This article advances the enlightened discussion of the nature, logic, and possible effects of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The purpose is to analyse the assumptions regarding how PISA is to achieve its intended effects, that is, to reconstruct PISA's programme theory (PT) and to probe the validity of its underlying assumptions. The article demonstrates that PISA's PT has low internal validity. However, some PISA assumptions are consistent, for example, the assumption that legitimisation activities justify PISA as a transnational benchmarking system measuring education system performance. PISA exemplifies systemic evaluation governance: all actors in the field are expected to use PISA results to react to and reflect on their own practice, compare themselves with others, and then act accordingly to improve education systems and school practice, though no activities or resources are allocated to change school practice. There is no empirical research into how systemic evaluation governance works in practice that can be used to probe PISA's external validity. PISA's PT is in line with discourse policy, governance theory, and school effectiveness research, but whether and under what conditions and how PISA helps change education systems and school practice are empirical questions waiting to be answered.

We experience the emergence of a global educational reform movement, where the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) through its project PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) has become the key driver. PISA and its focus on league tables and rankings influence educational debates and educational policy world-wide. The OECD is, with PISA as the main instrument, emerging as a kind of global ministry of education, promoting theirown standardized curriculum and system of quality assessment. PISA is designed to be used by the 30+ modern, highly developed countries in the OECD, but is also used by some 40 less developed non-OECD countries as a benchmark for their education system. This influence of OECD will be further widened by a version of PISA that will target developing countries, “PISA for development”. This instrument has the same underlying assumptions and ideals as PISA: the main concern is the national economy, not the personal development of the learner. There is also the underlying assumption that competition is always good, and that a free-market economy always promotes quality. The increasing role taken by the OECD is pushing aside the influence of international organization with different agendas and ideals, like UNESCO and UNICEF. Since studies like PISA by design cannot identify causal relationships behind neither success nor failure, the educational consequences of the studies are not clear. In many countries, PISA results are used to legitimize market-driven reforms, control of the teachers, payment by test results for teachers and principals, erosion of the public school system, privatization and the introduction of more testing regimes.In this development, the OECD now operates in close contact with the world’s largest commercial company in the education sector, Pearson Inc. The success of PISA as an instrument of governance is currently expanded also to target schools and their teaching in a more direct way: a PISA-like instrument, “PISA for Schools” is developed for local use, for schools and school districts, enabling them to compare their own schools to “PISA winners”. This development may also create anxiety and concern not only at the national or federal level, but also at the local level. This test is also a commercial product, opening up a large and untapped market.