Building on the experience of working with middle-income countries in PISA since 2000, and in an effort to respond to the emerging demand for PISA to cater to a wider range of countries, the OECD launched the PISA for Development (PISA-D) initiative in 2014. This one-off pilot project, spanning six years, aims to make the assessment more…

Delaying tracking, extending students' exposure to a general academic education and increasing their time on task on basic competences (reading, mathematics) could improve academic outcomes. To test the hypothesis that delayed vocational streaming improves academic outcomes, this paper analyzes Poland's significant improvements in international…

The primary claim of this Harvard Program on Education Policy and Governance report and the abridged Education Next version is that nations "that pay teachers on their performance score higher on PISA tests." After statistically controlling for several variables, the author concludes that nations with some form of merit pay system have,…

At a time of persistent unemployment, especially among the less skilled, many wonder whether schools are adequately preparing students for the 21st-century global economy. This is the second study of student achievement in global perspective prepared under the auspices of Harvard's Program on Education Policy and Governance (PEPG). In the 2010…

For decades Japan has remained at or near the top of international assessments of student learning; and in the past decade, students in Japan have become more engaged in learning. However, the government aspires to improve learning outcomes even further. "Strong Performers and Successful Reformers in Education: Lessons from PISA for…

Background: Educational differentiation, or the allocation of students to different types of school or different locations within schools, is a common feature of modern education systems. In most countries, student outcomes vary considerably, both by school and academic location within schools. Purpose: The purpose is to ascertain the extent that…

This study conducts a meta-analysis using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to address the questions of the extent of gender differences in reading, whether or not these differences apply similarly across English and non-English speaking countries and decrease with age. Female secondary students performed 0.19 standard deviation units above their…

Results of a previous meta-analysis of gender differences in reading achievement at the secondary school level (Lietz, in press) showed significant differences between major assessment programs. Thus, the gender gap in favour of girls was more pronounced for the assessment programs conducted by the National Assessment of Educational Programs in…

Findings from the recent OECD PISA studies highlight the need for the Hungarian school system to improve both effectiveness and equality. Hungarian 15-year-old students scored somewhat below or around the OECD average in the areas of reading, mathematical, and scientific literacy. In addition, students differ less in academic achievement within…

After describing both average scores, dispersion, and social inequalities in achievement in the various countries included in the latest Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study, this article relates those "products" to country economic and cultural characteristics. It then explores relations between student scores and…

Education aims to enable students not only to acquire knowledge but also to become capable and enthusiastic lifelong learners. Prior research has found that learning is more likely to be effective where a student plays a proactive role in the learning process. Such a proactive process, including learning on students' own initiative and strategies,…