PISA Ranking

The following sections are included:

• Contents
• About the Author
• Prologue

Globalization not only brings about international cooperation but also international competition. Nations make their best efforts to be seen as welcoming international collaborations and project an image of capability in joint endeavors, especially through showing the availability of educated human capital (Stewart, 2012; Hazelkorn, 2015). Although globalization may not be the original motivation for international rankings of education, it definitely has contributed to the popularity.

In the Foreword of the PISA 2009 Results: What Students Know and Can Do — Student performance in Reading, Mathematics, and Science, Volume 1, the OECD Secretary-General, Angel Gurría makes it abundantly clear that the Program for PISA is to provide “reliable information on how well education systems prepare students for life.” Thus, PISA evaluates the quality, equity and efficiency of school systems in 65 countries/cities (for brevity, hereafter cities).

Globalization makes the world metaphorically much smaller than it used to be and encourages frequent interaction between the East and the West in practically all human endeavors. However, until the day when the two worlds merge, there are still distinct differences between them. For example, Tokonaga (2014) contrasted 10 values and worldviews of the East and the West.

The year 2009 seems to be a turning point for Finland’s education when it was hailed as the world’s best system. The quotes below reflect the joyous elation: The transformation of the Finns’ education system began some 40 years ago as the key propellant of the country’s economic recovery plan… In the 2009 PISA scores released last year, the nation came in second in science, third in reading and sixth in math among nearly half a million students worldwide (Hancock, September, 2011, para 1).

International studies of student performance such as Trends in Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), Programme in International Reading and Literacy Study (PIRLS) of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (TIMSS & PIRLS International Study Centre, n.d.) and PISA of the Organization for the Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD, 2010a) are supposed to provide useful information for evaluation and development of education systems of the world, at least the participating countries. These studies attempt at doing this by comparing countries on achievements in core subjects such as Reading, Mathematics, and Science and relate these to background conditions or factors believed to be responsible for achievement. However, in a highly competitive world of today, this intention seems to have been overlooked or sidestepped as countries keenly compare their own rankings with those of the other countries. This attitude of one-upmanship cannot escape attention as it glaringly shows up in postings on the Internet.

In the competitive world of today, countries compete on many things, from sports to economies, from university rankings to environmental sustainability, and even competitiveness itself (Soh 2011a, 2011b). International studies of student performance, such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), Programme in International Reading and Literacy Study (PIRLS) of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement and PISA of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), provide an arena for the keen academic, although they might have been started with the innocuous objective of providing information on a global basis for countries that wish to learn from others to improve their education systems. In such a competitive context, differences tend to be emphasized and similarities are overlooked.

As highlighted by Eureka Alert (2008), Asian students were top performers in Mathematics and Science at both the fourth and eighth grades as reported in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). Likewise, Asian students were top performers in Reading, Mathematics, and Science in PISA 2009 (OECD, 2010). More specifically, Shanghai-China, Korea, Hong Kong-China, Singapore, and Japan were ranked within the top-10 among the 65 countries that participated in PISA 2009. This superior performance of East Asian students in the international comparative surveys may be attributed to various reasons. One of these is their intense involvement in after-school lessons.

The following sections are included:

• Introduction
• Time and Achievement
• Method
• Results
• Discussion and Conclusions
• Limitations
• Acknowledgement
• References

The world is obsessed with rankings in international educational comparative surveys. Practically, immediately after the release of PISA 2012 (OECD, 2013) results, many national commentaries popped up on the internet.

In a general sense, resilience is “that ineffable quality that allows some people to be knocked down by life and come back stronger than ever. Rather than letting failure overcome them and drain their resolve, they find a way to rise from the ashes” (Psychology Today, n.d.). While this definition focuses on the ability to bounce back, so to speak, Cherry (n.d.) describe resilient people, thus, People that are able to keep their cool have what psychologists call resilience, or an ability to cope with problems and setbacks. Resilient people are able to utilize their skills and strengths to cope and recover from problems and challenges. (Emphasis added.).

The author, of the now classic How to Lie with Statistics, Huff ’s (1954) caution against spurious precision is evergreen. This is an especially wise advice in a world full of competitions where a very small difference may be accorded with great importance that is not warranted. In such competitions, contestants are judged with some rational or rationalized criteria and then ranked. Familiar examples are the world beauty pageant, football leagues and, of course, the Olympics. The outcomes of such competitions get people highly excited because people watching these are highly engaged and emotionally identifying with the contestants. In such engagements, the original purposes (usually noble in the first place) are often lost from the view and the competitions lose their original meanings. For instance, football games are meant to promote interest in a sport that leads to health-enhancement. As the years passed by, this sport deteriorates into an entertainment, then a business, and now a gamble. It does not take much imagination to see how other kind of competitions have deviated from their original purposes and gained functional autonomy.

There is more than one way to skin a cat and there is more than one way to analyze a set of data. That is why we have two kinds of statistics — the individual and the group. The question is, which one do we look up and which one do we make up? And, more importantly, do they tell the same story and, if not, why?

Under the auspices of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), PISA (OECD, n.d.) is an international survey of student achievement and related information. It is conducted every three years and covers nearly 70 countries of the world. PISA, since its installation in 2000, has its focus on achievement in Reading, Mathematics, and Science of the 15-year-old students who are near the end of compulsory secondary schooling. PISA prefers the term literacy to achievement as it claims that the PISA tests for the three subjects are not content-based and past-oriented as most other studies or surveys of students’ learning outcomes. In contrast, the PISA tests are said to be competence-based and future-oriented, designed to assess the extent with which students are able to apply their knowledge in real-life situations and be equipped for full participation in society (OECD, 2010a). However, this supposedly subtle difference in conceptualization of the assessment tools has been a controversy (Mathews, 2009; Moritmore, 2009; Sjoberg, 2007).

Highlighting the top-performing countries in the PISA 2009 survey (OECD, 2010, p. 13), the Executive Summary goes thus, Korea and Finland are the highest performing OECD countries, with mean scores of 539 and 536 points, respectively. However, the partner economy Shanghai-China outperforms them by a significant margin, with a mean score of 556. Top-performing countries or economies in reading literacy include Hong Kong-China (with a mean score of 533), Singapore (526), Canada (524), New Zealand (521), Japan (520) and Australia (515).

There is no denial that PISA is the most important international comparative study of achievements. Education officials, politicians, and the public have been paying attention to its ranking results and take them seriously, perhaps, too seriously at times. PISA is a complex undertaking, although it looks not serious enough in some conceptual and methodological aspects and issues have been raised by various concerned researchers over the years. This chapter highlights some of these criticisms directed at international rankings and PISA in particular. The purpose is to caution against overconfidence in its interpretation and use which can be costly, both practically and psychologically. However, a comprehensive review is not attempted here but just a sample which hopefully is representative of the literature.

Data collection tools are critical to social research. The validity of results of surveys like PISA depends on the tests (and questionnaires) it used to collect the needed data. There are important qualities such as reliability and reliability of the data collected and one of the quality that seems to be taken for granted, the readability of the data collection tools.

The main purpose of the PISA (OECD, 2010a) is to provide useful information of student achievements in Reading, Mathematics, and Science (with Reading as the main focus for PISA 2009) in the participating countries around the world. The information is to enable countries to evaluate the students’ performance in the widest possible context on earth. To facilitate better understanding of the achievement or the lack of it, PISA also gathers information through background questionnaire survey of various aspects of schools, students, and even families. The choice of measures for inclusion in the questionnaire survey is presumably guided by relevant studies in the pertinent literature.

The following section is included:

• Epilogue