International Comparative Assessments: Broadening the Interpretability, Application and Relevance to the United States. Research in Review 2012-5

Many articles and reports have reviewed, researched, and commented on international assessments from the perspective of exploring what is relevant for the United States' education systems. Researchers make claims about whether the top-performing systems have transferable practices or policies that could be applied to the United States. However, looking only at top-performing education systems may omit important knowledge that could be applied from countries with similar demographic, geographic, linguistic, or economic characteristics--even if these countries do not perform highly on comparative assessments. Moreover, by exploring only the top performers, a presumption exists that these international assessments are in alignment with a country's curricular, pedagogic, political, and economic goals, which may falsely lead to the conclusion that by copying top performers, test scores would invariably increase and also meet the nation's needs. While international comparative assessments can be valuable when developing national or state policies, the way in which they are interpreted can be broadened cautiously to better inform their interpretability, relevance, and application to countries such as the United States--all while considering the purpose of each international assessment in the context of a nation's priorities. Ultimately, this report serves as a reference guide for various international assessments, as well as a review of literature that explores a possible relationship between national economies and international assessment performance. In addition, this review will discuss how policymakers might use international assessment results from various systems to adapt successful policies in the United States. Tables are appended.