ASCD November 2006 Volume 64 Number 3 NCLB Taking Stock Looking Forward Page 1 of 7 Pages 58 63 Assessment Around the World Iris C Rotberg How does NCLB fit in an international context Here s what s happening in the rest of the world Standardized testing is controversial everywhere regardless of its purpose Most countries use testing for tracking and for selecting November 2006 students for admission into academic secondary schools or universities but generally not for holding educators accountable Many countries don t even administer standardized tests until the later grades In fact most Canadian universities don t require the Scholastic Aptitude Test SAT or other standardized admissions tests except for students applying with a U S high school diploma Ghosh 2004 In a recent collection of studies of education systems worldwide which I edited 1 numerous experts discussed current education policies in their countries including the role that standardized testing plays in their public schools Rotberg 2004 I draw on these overviews here to set No Child Left Behind NCLB in the context of testing across the globe The current preoccupation with test based accountability in the United States is founded on several misperceptions about other countries practices as well as about international test score comparisons and the extent to which test scores are valid indicators of the quality of education or the state of the economy These assumptions have dominated U S public policy dialogue for decades Assumption The rest of the developed world is one high achieving country Much of the rhetoric about international test score comparisons treats the rest of the developed world as though it were one mythical country that does a better job of educating students than the United States does However the rhetoric does not recognize the significant differences in student academic achievement among developed countries the level and distribution of education funding the extent to which schools track students by academic ability secondary school and university enrollment rates and perhaps most important the quality of education that each country offers low income students minority students students with disabilities languageminority students and recent immigrants Assumption Other countries have found the right way to improve student achievement Many people in the United States assume that other countries have centralized education systems and that the resulting standardization is the magic bullet for improving student achievement This assumption ignores the fact that many countries question that policy France for example is reassessing its highly centralized education system because it doesn t meet the needs of an increasingly diverse immigrant population Many other countries such as China Israel and Sweden are moving from a centralized to a decentralized system of governance Australia Canada and Germany countries with long standing decentralized systems envision little http www ascd org portal site ascd template MAXIMIZE menuitem 459dee008f99653f 11 27 2006 ASCD Page 2 of 7 change In addition no evidence supports the contention that organizational structure whether centralized or decentralized bears any relationship to academic achievement or the ability to compete in the global economy Assumption International test score rankings are valid measures of the quality of education Data do not support the causal relationships that many people establish on the basis of international rankings If a country ranks high on a given international comparison people assume that its schools must be good if the country ranks low its schools must be bad The problem is international test score comparisons are virtually impossible to interpret not only because of enormous differences among nations in poverty rates and in societal values and objectives but also because of major sampling problems which make it difficult to ensure that comparable samples of students schools and regions are being tested across countries Assumption A country s ranking on test score comparisons predicts its ability to compete in the global economy This assumption has been repeated in various guises for the past 40 years with little evidence to support it The fact is many countries typically perceived as high scoring on international test score comparisons such as Austria France Sweden Switzerland and the United Kingdom are not the United States main economic competitors The United States outsources technical jobs because U S consumers are unwilling to accept higher prices and U S workers are unwilling to accept lower wages to compete with computer programmers in India or with computer manufacturers in China These two countries enroll only about one third of a given age group by the final years of secondary school Moreover the education systems of Western European countries and Japan have not immunized their economies against competition from less developed countries with significantly lower rates of literacy and lower enrollment in secondary and higher education Assumption Testing can help the United States address the problems that poverty has created The rhetoric about NCLB ignores the overwhelming impact of poverty the primary correlate of low academic achievement in every country Grissmer Kirby Berends Williamson 1994 Although the size of the achievement gap among students from different socioeconomic backgrounds may vary among countries the existence of this gap is universal The link between poverty and achievement is higher in the United States than in many other industrialized countries This is not surprising given the fact that the United States has both larger income gaps between rich and poor Blackburn 1997 and fewer social support systems than most industrialized countries do But high stakes testing accountability requirements and centralization cannot cure the problems associated with poverty As one educator put it We believe that schools solve the problem of poverty and now this program NCLB assumes that tests solve the problem of schools By implication that means tests are supposed to solve the problem of poverty Rotberg Bernstein Ritter 2001 p 14 Assumption Countries that score high on international test score comparisons hold their educators accountable for students scores on standardized tests In reality few countries hold educators accountable for students test scores Many of the countries that the United States most admires for