Lessons from PISA for the United States: strong performers and successful reformers in education
(2011)Abstract
united States President Barack obama has launched one of the world’s most ambitious education reform agendas.
entitled “race to the top”, the agenda encourages uS states to adopt internationally benchmarked standards and
assessments as a framework within which they can prepare students for success in college and the workplace;
recruit, develop, reward, and retain effective teachers and principals; build data systems that measure student
success and inform teachers and principals how they can improve their practices; and turn around their lowestperforming schools.
But what does the “top” look like internationally? how have the countries at the top managed to achieve sustained
high performance or to significantly improve their performance? the oecd Programme for international Student
assessment (PiSa) provides the world’s most extensive and rigorous set of international surveys of the knowledge
and skills of secondary school students. it allows one to compare countries on measures such as their average
learning outcomes, their share of low-performing schools, the extent to which socio-economic background shapes
learning outcomes and how consistently their schools deliver high quality outcomes.
When oecd Secretary-general angel gurría and united States Secretary of education arne duncan met in april 2010,
both felt that much was to be gained from a more detailed analysis of the policies and practices of those education
systems that are close to the “top” or advancing rapidly. this volume takes up the challenge, and is a first step towards
a deeper understanding of education systems and policy trajectories through international comparisons.