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Alan,
Thanks you so much for pointing back to the actualities of PISA.  For me the question is improving and understanding the measure.  I heartily concur with your admonishment.  Correspondingly, SES plays a demonstrable part of test results.  That is something that is variable and fixable, and needs to be accounted for in making comparisons.  

Finland may not be as much the miracle we thought it was, and South Korea may be faulty, but the Turkey, Brazil, Ireland and the US are not inextricably mired either.  Scores can be affected by education both formal and informal.  However, SES needs to be accounted for as well.  

Reflecting back on the US, the growing class distinction and lack of mobility is very likely to play an increasing role in our PISA performance.
C
On Mar 22, 2013, at 8:13 AM, Alan Friedman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> ISEN-ASTC-L is a service of the Association of Science-Technology Centers
> Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
> *****************************************************************************
> 
> I usually agree with Dennis, but in this case I've got to disagree
> strongly with his all-out attacks on national and international
> standards-based testing.  Oh yes, these tests are fair game for rigorous
> scrutiny.  If you don't like the message, it is entirely appropriate to
> question whether the messenger has distorted the message, or if the message
> itself is devoid of meaning.
> 
> Before I dispute Dennis' assertions, first my personal disclaimers:
> Eight years ago I was asked to join the National
> Assessment Governing Board (NAGB), a 25-year old Congressionally-mandated
> body that sets policy and oversees the National Assessment of Educational
> Progress (NAEP).  I have learned a tremendous amount about
> NAEP, and something about PISA and TIMSS.  I must also be one of the
> villains in Dennis' version of the testing story, because for a couple of
> years I have been the chair of the Assessment Development Committee of
> NAGB.  My committee reviews every item on every NAEP assessment, and we
> also oversee the creation of the Frameworks which define what's in the
> tests.  My comments reflect my personal views, not necessarily those of
> NAGB.  But now that I've described my own involvement and potential biases,
> I beg to differ with nearly everything my friend Dennis says in his posts.
> 
> "Who decides what a 3rd grader should know?  Why some psychometrician
> somewhere, of course!"
> 
> OK, I didn't know what a psychometrician was 8 years ago, but now some of
> my best friendsŠ.  Actually, there are many psychometricians involved, in
> NAGB, in the US Department of Education which operates NAEP, and working
> for the contractors who NAGB hires to draft the assessments.  But
> psychometricians are a tiny minority of the (literally) thousands of
> people who are involved with creating the Frameworks, which describe what
> NAEP is intended to measure.  Those thousands include teachers,
> principals, superintendents, parents, pedagogy experts, curriculum
> developers, business people, informal science educators, and in the case
> of STEM, practicing scientists, engineers, and mathematicians.  The
> process of creating a framework and the actual assessment which implements
> it takes several years, and also involves thousands of students who
> participate in iterative probe and pilot tests of every test.  This
> includes interviews with students about what they think a a given question
> means, and why they responded the way they did to each item.  All the
> Frameworks are public documents, open to review and critique
> (http://www.nagb.org/publications/frameworks.html)...

Charles Carlson
Senior Scientist | Teacher Institute

http://blogs.exploratorium.edu/whyintercept/
Twitter: @charliec53
email: [log in to unmask] 
Tel:   415-528-4319
Fax:  415-885-6011
exploratorium.edu
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