The Hechinger Report – Jill Barshay
“Here’s an interesting way to turn international test scores on their heads: rank each country by the performance of its weakest students. Every three years, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) releases test scores for 15-year old students around the world. Headlines follow, noting who’s on top and who’s fallen behind in the global brains race. The United States generally ranks on the south side of average (see here). But recently the OECD decided to analyze the past decade of test scores in a new way, to see which nations do the best job of educating their struggling students, and what lessons could be learned. This is important because low-performing students are more likely to drop out of school, and less likely to obtain good jobs as adults. Ultimately, they put more strains on social welfare systems and brakes on economic growth. The results were released on February 10, 2016 in an OECD report, “Low-Performing Students: Why They Fall Behind and How To Help Them Succeed’.”(more)