Placing PISA and PISA for schools in two federalisms, Australia and the USA

ABSTRACT

This paper accepts that the OECD’s PISA has become influential in policy terms globally, but analyses the ways that the main PISA and PISA for Schools tests are positioned differently in Australia and the USA because of contrasting educational federalisms in the two nations. Our argument is that while PISA is undoubtedly influential, its effects are nonetheless mediated by the political structures – here, the different models of federalism – present within different nations, which in turn leads to quite distinct ‘PISA effects’. For instance, Australia oversamples on main PISA to make its data available for national and state-level policymaking, whereas the USA, with its focus on local governance in schooling, does not oversample, meaning that main PISA does not have a comparable policy salience as in Australia. Conversely, the newer PISA for Schools test originated in the USA with pressure from educators and philanthropic interests and has been implemented in a good number of schools, but it has not been taken up in the same way in Australia. Our analyses show how these differences reflect the idiosyncratic workings of federalism in the two nations, in which the federal government has a stronger policy and funding role in Australia than has hitherto been the case for the federal government in the USA.

KEYWORDS:

• Common Core State Standards
• federalism
• national curriculum
• OECD
• philanthropies
• PISA
• PISA for Schools

Acknowledgements

We thank Dr Glenn Savage for his helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper. We also note that this paper was finalised at the time of the election of President Trump. No account has been taken in the analysis of the likely effects of this Presidency on the functioning of US federalism. We suspect there will be a lesser federal role and larger role for edu-businesses and charter schools.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The use of ‘State’ in the descriptor is indicative of the lesser role of the US federal government in schooling policy and curriculum than that of the federal government in Australia, where the talk was initially of ‘national curriculum’ and now is of the ‘Australian curriculum’.

2. Australian Research Council Discovery project (DP1094850), Schooling the Nation in an Age of Globalisation; and the Australian Research Council Discovery project (DP150102098), Data in Schools and Systems: An International Study.

3. We would also suggest that Dewey’s argument about democracy and schooling has had powerful long-term effects on local parental and community involvement in schooling policy in the USA.

4. Brass (2016, pp. 231–232) notes, ‘… the CCS was developed by a network of trade groups (e.g. Achieve, Inc.), policy entrepreneurs (e.g. David Colemena), philanthropists (e.g. the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation), think tanks (e.g. the Hunt Institute), nonprofits (e.g. Student Achievement Partners), and testing companies (e.g. ACT) who answered the call to develop national college and career readiness standards on behalf of the 50 states’. Also see Hursh (2016).

5. While Australia does oversample so state-level comparisons can be made, the reality is that all the talk about PISA performance in Australia is still largely about national comparative performance. Also see here Gorur and Wu (2015).

6. See Addey’s paper in this Critical Studies of Education regarding comments by Andreas Schleicher on the lack of impact to date of main PISA on classroom practices. Also see Gorur (2016) about PISA effects.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by two Australian Research Council Discovery projects: DP1094850 and DP150102098.

Notes on contributors

Bob Lingard

Dr. Bob Lingard is a professorial research fellow in the School of Education at The University of Queensland where he researches education policy. His most recent books include, the co-authored Globalizing Educational Accountabilities (Routledge, 2016), the co-edited The Handbook of Global Education Policy (Wiley Blackwell, 2016), the co-edited, National Testing in Schools (Routledge, 2016) and the sole-authored, Politics, Policies and Pedagogies in Education (Routledge, 2014).

Steven Lewis

Dr. Steven Lewis is a researcher in the School of Education at The University of Queensland and has published extensively on PISA, PISA for Schools, data in education, ‘what works’, educational accountability and on national testing in Australia. This work has recently been published in the Journal of Education Policy, Comparative Education Review, British Journal of Sociology of Education and Critical Studies in Education.