“We disaggregated the numbers by social class,” said Richard Rothstein, a research associate at EPI and co-author of the report. “What’s puzzling is why international tests like PISA release overall average scores first, then more nuanced data weeks or months later, since this promotes misleading analyses.”
Rothstein revealed that, when compared to other countries, the achievement gap between students in the U.S. is extremely small, and in fact, the most disadvantaged students’ scores have been increasing, and continue to increase, over the years; whereas disadvantaged students’ scores from top-performing countries like Finland have not—they’ve decreased.
“What this report does is challenge the easy assumption that following Finnish education leads to success. When you adjust the data so that disadvantaged and lunch-eligible students are re-weighted, U.S. student performance goes from 25th place in math to 10th; and from 14th place in reading to 4th,” he said.
“We’re not attacking any tests,” said Martin Carnoy, a professor of education at Stanford and co-author of the report. “We’re simply showing that disaggregating by social class reveals much more policy-relevant information.”
For example, Carnoy said, according to PISA’s reading scores, economically advantaged students in the U.S. score as high as Finland, Canada, and Korea—PISA’s top-performing countries. Also, disadvantaged U.S. students score higher than France, Germany, and the U.K.
“You can’t compare nations’ test scores without looking at the social class characteristics of students who take the test in different countries,” said Carnoy. “Nations with more lower social class students will have lower overall scores, because these students don’t perform as well academically, even in good schools. Policy makers should understand how our lower and higher social class students perform in comparison to similar students in other countries before recommending sweeping school reforms.”
Carnoy suggested that U.S. education policy might be influenced by inaccurate data, noting that because Education Secretary Arne Duncan “talks about how we’re making small gains,” he’s not receiving accurate information—and therefore policy directions “should be changed.”
Conclusions based on these averages “ignore the complexity of test results and may lead policy makers to pursue inappropriate and even harmful reforms,” said Rothstein, who also is senior fellow at the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute of Law and Social Policy at the University of California-Berkeley School of Law.
The report describes how, in TIMSS reports from 1999 to 2007 (2011 data will be analyzed when available), disadvantaged U.S. students have made consistent gains.
“While it’s not my place to comment on policy changes, I will say that average scores are not sufficient on which to base sound education policy,” said Hans Wagemaker, executive director of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. “What’s useful about this report is that the discussion moves away from averages and uses trend data as compositional data over time.”
(Next page: ‘Arbitrary’ decisions about content by designers of the tests?)
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