ANOTHER SLICE OF PISA: Alliance’s “PISA Day” Coverage Draws More than 70,000 Individuals Worldwide; Archived Video Available

On December 3, 2013, the Alliance for Excellent Education and its partners hosted PISA Day to explore the latest results from the 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a test of reading literacy, mathematics, and science given every three years to fifteen-year-olds in the United States and more than sixty-five countries worldwide by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

While many focused on where American fifteen-year-olds ranked in reading (seventeenth), science (twentieth), and mathematics (twenty-seventh) among the thirty-four countries of the OECD, PISA Day looked beyond the international rankings to the lessons that can be learned from PISA. PISA Day activities included:

• an official announcement by U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan and OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria of the international results of the PISA with discussions of implications for U.S. education policy;

• a presentation by Andreas Schleicher, Deputy Director for Education and Skills, and Special Advisor on Education Policy to the Secretary-General of the OECD, containing in-depth findings for the United States from the report;

• a panel discussion with foreign exchange high school students moderated by Amanda Ripley, author of the bestselling The Smartest Kids in the World and How They Got That Way; and

• the release of a new Alliance report, The Deepest Learners: What PISA Can Reveal About the Learning that Matters, which uses PISA results to reveal that the United States struggles to produce top performers in reading, math, and science at the rates of its international peers; and

• discussions with national education leaders on the implications of the PISA results for policy, teaching, and economic growth.

More than 70,000 individuals watched the live video stream of PISA Day—part of which was used by NBC Nightly News in its report on the PISA results, “U.S. Teens Lag in Global Education Rankings as Asian Countries Rise to the Top.” If you missed any of PISA Day, archived video, which includes Mr. Schleicher’s PowerPoint, is available at PISADay.org.