Tom Loveless

Blog Posts


PISA's China Problem Continues: A Response to Schleicher, Zhang, and Tucker

PISA's China Problem Continues: A Response to Schleicher, Zhang, and Tucker

On October 2013, I posted an essay, “ PISA’s China Problem,” that called on the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to fully disclose its arrangement with China regarding Shanghai’s participation in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA).  The latest PISA scores were to be released in December, offering an excellent opportunity for the OECD to dispel the mystery surrounding Shanghai’s 2009 involvement with PISA. I noted that Shanghai, the wealthiest, most educated province in China, was the only mainland province officially participating in PISA 2009 and PISA 2012.  Other data from rural areas of China had been talked about by PISA officials over the years, but never released to the public domain. I called on PISA to release those data.

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Attention OECD-PISA: Your Silence on China Is Wrong

Attention OECD-PISA: Your Silence on China Is Wrong

On December 3, scores were released from the 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a test given every three years to 15 year-olds around the globe.  Shanghai led the world in all three subjects—math, science, and reading.  But that ranking is misleading. Shanghai has a school system that excludes most migrant students, the children of families that have moved to the city from rural areas of China.  And now for three years running, the OECD and PISA continue to promote a distorted picture of Shanghai’s school system by remaining silent on the plight of Chinese migrant children and what is one of the greatest human rights calamities of our time.

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Be Wary of Ranking NAEP Gains

Be Wary of Ranking NAEP Gains

Last week, the latest scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) were released.  The state of Tennessee performed exceptionally well, registering statistically significant gains from 2011 to 2013 on all four NAEP tests: fourth grade reading, fourth grade math, eighth grade reading, and eighth grade math. Tennesseans should be pleased with the progress the state is making in education.

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PISA's China Problem

PISA's China Problem

This December, the latest scores will be released from the Programme for International Student Achievement (PISA), a widely followed international assessment. American press coverage—whether web-based, on television, or in old-fashioned print—will decry the mediocre showing of the U.S. and express astonishment at the performance of China. One problem. China does not take the PISA test. A dozen or so provinces in China take the PISA, along with two special administrative regions (Hong Kong and Macao). But journalists and pundits will focus on the results from one province, Shanghai, and those test scores will be depicted, in much of the public discussion that follows, as the results for China. That is wrong.

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Charter School Study: Much Ado About Tiny Differences

Charter School Study: Much Ado About Tiny Differences

The latest charter school study from the Center for Research on Education
Outcomes (CREDO) was released last week. It provided an update to a similar report published in 2009. The 2009 study had found that charter schools underperformed traditional public schools (TPS) by about .01 standard deviations on state achievement tests of reading and .03 standard deviations in math. The new study showed charters doing better, out-performing TPS by .01 standard deviations in reading and scoring about the same as TPS in math.

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