We're used to hearing dismal stories about how US students stack up in reading when compared to kids in other countries. The main report researchers look at for this information is the "Programme for International Student Assessment" (PISA), which is administered every 3 years under the auspices of the OECD. When you hear those stories that say things like "U.S. ranks 23rd out of 29 industrialized countries in reading" - it's the PISA they're talking about.
Well this week the news broke that in the current round of PISA testing the US isn't even going to be included. Yes it appears that we are not even ranked.
The reason will not surprise you...
According to Education Week (subscription required):
Reading scores for the United States on an international assessment of student skills have been invalidated because of major errors in the printing of the test, in what a top federal education official called an "embarrassment" for government officials and the private contractor responsible for administering the exam.
Yep. When the results of the PISA are published later this month, there will be no information on American students, because our very own Department of Education effed up the job of proctoring the damn tests.
The culprit was a major printing error by the testing contractor, RTI, that was not caught by ED employees charged with overseeing the program.
RTI is a major contractor with the Department of Education. It currently has 13 active contracts with the agency, valued at $196 million, department officials said... The contract for the PISA test was competitively bid, Mr. Schneider said. Andreas Schleicher, the head of the indicators and analysis division for the OECD, said the incident marked the first time that a country’s results were excluded because of students being given a seriously misprinted test.
Bravo, Bushies!