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Just this week, two different teams of authors published papers showing that cross-country comparisons of test scores (PISA, TIMSS) should be taken with a huge grain of salt.
Paper 1: @gema_zamarro and coauthors show that various measures of student effort explain over 30% of the variation in PISA scores across countries.
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/705799">https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/...
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/705799">https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/...
Paper 2: @UriGneezy and coauthors show that paying US students to try harder during these exams substantially boosts their scores (but Chinese students appear to already be exerting maximum effort).
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aeri.20180633">https://www.aeaweb.org/articles...
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aeri.20180633">https://www.aeaweb.org/articles...
International rankings based on test scores thus conflate achievement and effort.
Both quantities matter, but you should be substantially more skeptical when someone says that American students know a lot less than their international peers.
We just don& #39;t know that.
Both quantities matter, but you should be substantially more skeptical when someone says that American students know a lot less than their international peers.
We just don& #39;t know that.
Another recent paper in this vein (h/t @Stephen_Sawchuk):
Account for "non-serious" test-taking behavior substantially alters PISA scores.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w24930 ">https://www.nber.org/papers/w2...
Account for "non-serious" test-taking behavior substantially alters PISA scores.
https://www.nber.org/papers/w24930 ">https://www.nber.org/papers/w2...
