The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2022 results came out yesterday. If you are not familiar with PISA, it is “a worldwide study by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in member and non-member nations intended to evaluate educational systems by measuring 15-year-old school students' academic performance in mathematics, science, and reading. It was first conducted in 2000 and then repeated every three years” according to Wikipedia. Due to Covid, the 2021 study was postponed to 2022.
Like other assessments, the results give people an idea of where the educational system in their country stands, but more importantly, a chance to see the trends, challenges, and opportunities moving forward.
Among all the information PISA shared, a few things stand out for me:
1. Despite Covid disruption and unprecedented performance drop, some countries and areas are able to maintain or improve. Most of these countries and areas are also community-based societies.
2. The top three things to learn from resilient school systems are: open schools longer for all students, prepare students for autonomous/self-directed learning, and build a strong school community and service for all students.
3. For the first time, PISA mentions “preparing students for a changing world”, emphasizing “support students in and beyond the classroom” along with “keeping parents involved in students’ learning”.
For the mathematics assessment, the US school systems had a drastic decline among OECD nations and are far below the OECD average, while reading and science assessments are slightly above the average level. There are many reasons leading to the decline worldwide, but for the US, the long school closure during COVID-19, and not feeling safe in the classroom and school (both are worse than the OECD average) are two of the important reasons that stand out.
Instead of believing it is only the government's job to improve the educational systems, I believe it is everyone's responsibility to care for and help our school systems improve for the children and the future of the world.
