Competitive comparison and PISA bragging rights: sub-national uses of the OECD's PISA in Canada and the USA

Abstract

Participation in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) has continuously expanded: from 43 systems in 2000 to 65 systems in the 2012 cycle, with 71 signed up for PISA 2015. There also has been a growth in sub-national participation, expanding PISA's reach beyond the nation-state. This paper explores sub-national PISA participation in Canada and the USA, asking how PISA is being used within sub-national education policy spaces. We draw on analysis of documents and data from interviews with officials at sub-national, national, and international levels. Findings illustrate some of the diverse motivations and uses of PISA, providing insights into the effects of PISA at the sub-national scale. As such, we argue that competitive comparison in education has deepened through the enhanced granularity of international large-scale assessment data to new scales beyond the nation-state.

An Examination of the Influence of International Large Scale Assessments and Global Learning Metrics on National School Reform Policies

“…As one of the expert survey respondents explained, ILSAs/GLMs are effectively used as a reform "trigger" or "lever" to advance particular education reform agendas, but without providing specifics about those agendas. Not surprisingly, this is exactly the main point of critique by those policy/research experts who are concerned with the rise of ILSAs/GLMs worldwide (Bieber & Martens, 2011;Engel & Frizzell, 2015;Figazzolo, 2009;Martens & Neimann, 2013;Plisko, 2013;Sellar & Lingard, 2013), and consistent with our literature review findings.…”

“…The majority (90%) of the publications we reviewed focused on national, or in several cases subnational (Engel & Frizzell, 2015), responses to PISA. There were four studies that looked at the effect of TIMSS on educational reforms, three for EGRA, and two for PIRLS and SACMEQ.…”

Steering the National: Exploring the Education Policy Uses of PISA in Spain

“…Participation in these assessments is voluntary and yet, a growing number of systems participate. There is also a growth of interest from subnations and other benchmarking entities, including examples in Canada, the United States, and Spain, among others 1 (Engel & Frizzell, 2015). The literature has used concepts of "voluntary policy convergence" to explore the ways in which soft power is exercised through these international comparative assessments and to explain the motivation to participate in these assessments (Bieber & Martens, 2011).…”

The Deployment of Scaffolding as a Strategy to Enhance Students' Reading Competence: A Case of Indonesian EFL Teachers

“…The level of reading competence in each term was far left behind the average scores of all surveyed countries. Indonesian students' reading competence was worse than that of neighboring countries, such as Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Singapore [1].…”

“…It determines the position of a country compared to other countries. The better a country can achieve a position, the better human resources the country shows [1]. Researches on reading competence through the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) showed that the result of Indonesian students' reading competence was low.…”