Next week, results from the 2012 administration of the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD)Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) will be released. PISA is an international assessment covering math, reading, and science administered every three years to a sample of 15-year-old students in roughly 70 countries. OECD and a number of partner organizations will host a webinar on December 3, 2013 to discuss the results. (Information about the webinar can be found at PISADay.org.)
The PISA results will likely receive significant media attention. Even though international assessments tend to show the United States performing in the middle of the pack, there is always great interest in seeing how our students stack up against their international peers. While the results are a valuable benchmark, they don’t breakdown individual school performance. Fortunately, that is starting to change. Earlier this year, OECD released results for 100 high schools across the United States that participated in a pilot assessment aligned to PISA called the OECD Test for Schools. Two charter schools, BASIS Tucson North and North Star Academy, performed extraordinarily well on assessment. In fact, students from BASIS Tucson North topped the scores, out-performing every single country in reading, math, and science. The OECD Test for Schools is officially launching in the 2013-14 school year, and any high school can sign up to administer the assessment to their 15-year-old students. Schools will take the assessment in the spring of 2014 and receive results and detailed reports in the summer. The National Alliance has partnered with the Kern Family Foundation to provide subsidies to a limited number of charter high schools to take the assessment. There are still opportunities for charter high schools to sign up with the National Alliance and take advantage of the subsidy. Interested schools should reach out to the National Alliance for more information. Anna Nicotera is the senior director of research at the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.
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