The 2026 PISA international education scores are published, and we once again wring our hands because the achievements of our students stay low or declined. Asian and Nordic children continue to dominate achievement on international assessments. We wail that – Low achievement is due to the pandemic! Low achievement is due to failed instruction! Low achievement is due to too much screen time in school! Low achievement is due to too many immigrant children in our schools! We have been bemoaning these same red herrings for years. These are not the reasons why US students do not score well on international assessments.
The Big Duh!
I usually leave “The Big Duh!” for my conclusion, but not today. The causation for the low status of the United States on PISA assessments is this – our children are transactional and they perceive no benefit for giving their best efforts on the PISA. What matters to our children gets their attention and PISA test results do not matter. If we want to increase our students’ achievement on the PISA tests, we need to make the test results important to our children. If we cannot do this, then our nation needs to stop fretting about the PISA. It does not matter.
How do we know this?
Test analysis. US children spend less time considering and answering questions on the PISA tests than their international peers. And US students guess at more responses. And US students show more test fatigue with shorter response times and more guessing in the latter parts of tests.
The time a student commits to reading a question, reading the possible answers, considering the possible answers, and selecting a response to the question is their response time on each question. The PISA is computer-based. Not only does the system record student demographics and student responses to questions, the psychometrics of the test also records the time lag between when a student clicks to open a question and then clicks their selected answer. This is thinking time when a student considers the question, reads the possible responses, assesses what she knows about the responses, weighs the responses that are partially correct or seem correct, and clicks the answer she thinks is the single correct answer.
High performing international students spend an average of 100 to 110 seconds before responding to a question. If 100-110 is the average, many are taking even longer to parse out the correct answer. US students spend 80 to 90 seconds before responding. Also, responses in less than 5 seconds are termed “blind guesses” and US students make many more blind guesses than higher performing students. And test response analysis shows that US students begin to make more blind guesses in the latter parts of tests than do higher performing international students.
Being personally engaged with a test says that the test and its results matter to the test taker. The test analyses say that students in the United States are not engaged in taking the PISA. Why is that?
There are several reasons. Children in the US are over-tested and under-instructed. Every year a child takes mandated state assessments of reading, ELA, and math. At least twice and often more often a child takes progress monitoring assessments to evaluate the child against normative expectations for a grade level or age. And every unit and chapter is tested. Instruction in the United States stresses knowledge and understanding of facts packaged into shorter, more concise units and every unit has a test at the end. We also conclude units of instruction before all children have accomplished unit learning goals. One reason for ending instruction before all children have learned is our false assumption that our spiraled curriculum will teach them what they did not learn now in a later unit or grade level or course. But the real reason is that the school clock demands that “we move on” to teach all that is packed into a grade level or course curriculum.
American educators have studied Asian and Nordic schools to learn from their systems of education. From Asian schools we learned that education is much more important in their culture than in ours. Performance in school connects with the opportunities open to children out of and after school. Better performance opens better opportunities. Performance in school connects with family identity and Asian parents closely check what their children do in school each day. Education is status.
Nordic schools, especially those in Finland, approach education with less stress than in the United States. Units of instruction are more protracted in both breadth and depth. Where instruction in our schools is satisfied with factual answers, their instruction asks why the answers are correct and why some answers are more correct than other findings. And their model of instruction does not accept “you’ll learn this later;” no children are left in the lurch of unfinished learning. Students take fewer tests and their tests require a higher level of critical thinking. Finally, teachers in Nordic schools enjoy a much higher community and public respect than teachers in the United States. A teacher’s instruction and correction matter more there.
Finally, students never see their scores on the PISA tests. There is not prep for the test, no fanfare, and no explanation that “the pride of all children in the United States rests on how well you achieve on this test.” On the other hand, our students know that PSAT test results connect to scholarships and ACT and SAT test results decide the colleges and schools they are admitted to after high school graduation. The PSAT, ACT, and SAT matter because they connect to reality. PISA tests do not matter to schools, students, or parents in the United States.
In Conclusion
We know what we know. Because we know that the PISA tests do not matter to our schools, our students, or our parents, we should not fret about the published PISA test results. There are too many other and more worrisome things in public education for us to fix than PISA. Let’s get at those!