Pay to play: what does PISA participation cost in the US?

ABSTRACT

Much attention has been given to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) and its effects in different education systems, including the United States. This paper begins to address a major gap in this literature by focusing on the costs of participation in PISA. The paper draws on content analysis of official documents and budgets, as well as qualitative interviews with select government officials at federal and state levels. It details costs in three categories: direct overhead to the OECD, national implementation, and in-kind or human burden. As such, the paper details information on costs of PISA, important for eventual cost–benefit frameworks that may be useful for continued policy deliberations over US participation in PISA and other international large-scale assessments.

KEYWORDS:

• Costs
• international large-scale assessments
• PISA
• cost–benefit analysis

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge Matthew Frizzell for his assistance with this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The estimates for student-burden hours are calculated by a member of the research team to include all aspects of PISA participation. NCES, in their submission to OMB does not include time taken for directions or participating in assessments. Instead NCES’ calculation of student burden is only for the student questionnaire and responding to background items. Therefore, NCES calculated 3073 student-burden hours compared to the 17,105 student-burden hours presented here. In terms of dollar amounts, it is a difference of $101,732 between the two estimates.