If you are an educator or someone who stays engaged with public education in the US, do you remember when everyone wanted to be Finland? [1]
Pasi Sahlberg and everything Finland was the hot talking point only about a decade ago.
I, too, wrote about Finland, but mostly to point out that Finland’s international test score success was more a reflection of the country’s extremely low childhood poverty rate (the US childhood poverty rate then was about 8x higher) and homogenous society than about their curriculum or teacher quality.
That was routinely rejected by education reformers who were heavily into the no excuses ideology and fond of rhetoric such as “the soft bigotry of low expectations,” “education is a game changer,” and of course) “no excuses.”
Well, uh oh!
Now not even Finland wants to be Finland: PISA 2022: Performance in Finland collapses, but remains above average.
Wow, “collapses”!
That’s pretty dramatic, but the source of this new angst is the release of PISA scores for 2022. [2]
If we take a quick glance at a Google search, that PISA angst appears to be mostly universal (or better phrased, international):
The cries of “crisis” may be more intense over the large drop in math scores, but there is plenty of room for one of the national pastimes in the US: READ!NG CR!S!S!
While there literally has never been one moment in the US over the past 100 years that someone hasn’t been crying READ!NG CR!S!S!, the US has been embroiled in a particularly intense READ!NG CR!S!S! often grounded in our national testing, NAEP since 2018.
Setting aside the histrionics that always surround NAEP and PISA, look at some English-speaking countries and their reading scores for PISA 2022:
In the context of the UK having overhauled their reading legislation in ways that are being uncritically embraced in the US by the “science of reading” movement and while the US daily claims we are in the midst of a huge READ!NG CR!S!S!, one might find the US 10-point advantage and 9-point less decrease since 2018 a reason to celebrate.
One might also think that Ireland, Canada, and New Zealand may take some solace in their results.
Well, think again because there is only one response to reading test data—READ!NG CR!S!S!:
- The reading wars: What is the best way to teach kids their ABCs? (Ireland)
- Why some parents are eager for changes to Ontario’s early reading curriculum (Canada)
- National wants to change how NZ schools teach reading – but ‘structured literacy’ must be more than just a classroom checklist (New Zealand)
- The good news is bad news when it comes to Australian pupils’ Pisa scores. But there’s no need to panic (Pasi Sahlberg weighs in on Australia)
We must accept that national and international standardized testing of reading has almost nothing to do with evaluating or reforming student reading proficiency.
We must also accept that no matter the scores or the international rankings, the only media and political response anyone has is READ!NG CR!S!S!
And while it is an enduring and compelling story, shouting READ!NG CR!S!S! is best described by Macbeth:
it is a tale
The Tragedy of Macbeth, 5.5
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
[1] For a bit of historical context for this nonsense, consider this Swiss Schools and Ours: Why Theirs Are Better, Hyman G. Rickover (1962) [access a review here]
[2] I recommend Getting Ready for PISA, Tom Loveless
dr. p.l. (paul) thomas 