Quotes: OECD Test Is Different (Optional, International, Public)

The truth of the matter is that in this global economy we talk about so much and so often, my students are competing with everyone... And so it was important to me to sort of find some sort of a tool where I could say, ‘I think these are the skill sets they’re getting that make them competitive.'

-- Tiffany Huitt, the principal of a 415-student Dallas magnet school that has administered the exam multiple times via EWA (Exam Gives Glimpse of How Schools Stack Up Globally) 

 

Comments

[Bruce]

The danger of teaching to this, or any other specific test is that you steadily invalidate it without necessarily increasing the skills that the test is meant to assess. A better procedure is to look at how top performing jurisdictions such as Singapore, Switzerland's Schaffhausen, and Finland educate so that their 15-year-olds gain the desired competences in reading, mathematics, and science as a by-product, not necessarily directly sought, of their educations. This is what we are practising as One World Lyceum is being developed, and our early progress is encouraging. Our pupils are typically two years ahead of the Common Core and Next Generation standards in these subjects, which keeps them globally competitive, while they use Cambridge international exams to verify that the levels ordinarily reached in English, mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, and other subjects in Singapore are reached by our lyceans as well and in accordance with Singapore's academic calendar, which means that our pupils are actually ahead of some of the world's leaders.