Question

1. What are the characteristics of high performing systems and how do we measure them?

2. What are some other methods/systems that rank education in the world? (you can provide examples from K-12 or higher education). How do they compare to the PISA? (refer to your answer from the first question to answer this).

Answer 1

What are the characteristics of high performing education system?

High Performing Education System (HPES), its secret formula for education success is explained in terms of teacher quality, school leadership, system characteristics and educational reform.

Characteristics of HPES are as follows:

• A positive school climate
• A safe school climate
• Teachers to student ratio
• Dedicated teachers who love teaching and their students.
• Creative teachers
• Students enjoyment of being at school and in learning
• Student creativity and imagination
• Lots of laughing and smiling students
• The arts naturally integrated into content area learning
• A clear and shared focus
• High standards and expectations for all students
• Effective school leadership
• High levels of collaboration and communication
• Curriculum, instruction and assessments aligned with state standards

How do you measure High Performance:

• Teacher attendance and retention rates of effective staff.
• Rates of participation in collaborative decision making and planning time.
• Desire for and implementation of targeted professional development.
• Focus on student learning based on content and time on task.
• Student to teacher ratio. Measure how many students are admitted per class, per teacher.
• Student attendance rate.
• Course completion rate.
• International students %
• Drop out rate.

What are some other methods/systems that rank education in the world?

PISA stands in a tradition of international school studies, undertaken since the late 1950s by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). Much of PISA's methodology follows the example of the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS, started in 1995), which in turn was much influenced by the U.S. National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). The reading component of PISA is inspired by the IEA's Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS).

How do they compare to the PISA?

Singapore’s remarkable performance in Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has placed it among the world’s high-performing education systems (HPES). The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a worldwide study by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in member and non-member nations intended to evaluate educational systems by measuring 15-year-old school pupils scholastic performance on mathematics, science, and reading. It was first performed in 2000 and then repeated every three years. Its aim is to provide comparable data with a view to enabling countries to improve their education policies and outcomes. It measures problem solving and cognition. Students who participate in PISA are randomly chosen from among all the 15-year-olds enrolled in grade 7 or higher in the selected schools. They take the test in the same language they use in their normal classes. Students aren't asked to recall dates and names they may have memorised. PISA is unique because it focuses on the application of skills and knowledge and presents problems in real-world contexts. It is intended to provide a measure of students' overall preparedness for the future, not just their academic achievement. In each test subject, there is theoretically no minimum or maximum score in PISA; rather, the results are scaled to fit approximately normal distributions, with means for OECD countries around 500 score points and standard deviations around 100 score points. The number of countries/regions participating in PISA has increased from 32 in 2000 to about 88 in PISA 2021. Since 2003, all OECD member countries have taken part in PISA.

Many academics and educators critique PISA as an economic measurement, not an educational one. The media generally use PISA results to blame and shame school systems. And the way that some politicians, policy-makers and researchers have used PISA is more closely aligned to a political process than an educational one.