I'm not much interested in performance indicators of public schooling. They vary a little but don't change much over time. So we get mixed results. This report from the National Center for Education Statistics in the Institute of Education Sciences summarizes the performance of U.S. fourth-grade students on the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2006 assessment, comparing their scores with their peers internationally:
PIRLS is led by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA) and has been administered twice, in 2001 and 2006. The United States participated in both years. In 2006, 45 education systems participated, including 38 countries, 5 Canadian provinces, and the separate English- and French-speaking education systems in Belgium.
The average score for U.S. students was:
* higher than the average score in 22 education systems
* lower than 10 education systems and
* not significantly different from 12 education systems.
In 2001, the U.S. scored higher than 23 education systems, lower than 3 education systems, and not significantly different from 8 education systems.
Testing is a 2nd order descriptive analysis of schooling output. Even doing it much better won’t change the fact that it remains a descriptive fact about the system, not causal explanation of change. Judging from the constant movement toward testing, I'd guess that value added testing is the coming thing.
This Houston effort spurred by the Gates Foundation will surely generate a lot of talk but so what?
Teachers, students, and parents in the Houston Independent School District will soon benefit from a new data system that will monitor individual student progress, inform classroom instruction, and help teachers to provide more targeted support. HISD will receive $4.5 million over three years from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support the ASPIRE—Accelerating Student Progress, Increasing Results & Expectations—data system.
By tracking student results, teachers will be better able to identify individual strengths and weaknesses and target their support where it is needed most, helping all students to meet the high academic standards set by HISD and the state. The ASPIRE Initiative reflects HISD's continuing commitment to improve teaching and learning so that all young people can get the high-quality education they deserve.
Superintendent Abelardo Saavedra welcomed the support for Houston's groundbreaking project. "For the first time we are charting the individual academic growth of every child, and we're going to use that value-added data to design specific ways to help every child continue to improve," Dr. Saavedra said.
Testing doesn't cause anything anymore than sticking a thermometer into someone does. How exactly is knowing more about a student's test results and now how those results change over time to have any effect on teaching methods? Meanwhile, the overall test scores of the U.S. tend to remain flat over time. The system is in a general equilibrium condition regarding its output, and more money simply provides it with more economic energy to do more of the same.
Like the Post Office (you can't even buy stamps after 5 p.m. at the Sandy PO), consumer needs or values have little relevance in how the system operates since it relies on government design for its operations, and government people simply don’t have the omniscience required to design the thing. They don’t even allow more than one design. In particular those who are elected and impose the rules of the public school game lack any deep understanding of the kinds of human growth schools should try to promote. Instead, they impose demands for trivial activities and trivial results.
