Louis Volante, Professor of Education at Brock University; Francesca Borgonovi, British Academy Global Professor at UCL; and Jo Ritzen, Professor of International Economics of Education, Science and Technology at Maastricht University had a piece had a piece published in the Conversation on Nov. 28 about the need to implement new policies to gain a more accurate picture of how students around the world are performing academically.

They write:

One standardized assessment tool has become the key benchmark for national governments to judge their schools’ successes. But the academic rankings generated by the Program in International Student Assessment (PISA) are eclipsing important questions such as how particular groups of students are doing in school or graduation rates.

Educational excellence globally has become synonymous with outstanding achievement as gauged by PISA, which is steered by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development(OECD). 

But what does this mean? PISA captures both global and domestic or local snapshots of student achievement. PISA ranks, for example, how Finland measures up against Poland and other countries, but also provides in-depth reports that summarize how population groups — such as immigrants and non-immigrants — are doing within a country’s school systems.

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