December 10, 2010

American high school students are lagging behind their global peers in test scores, recording average marks in most subject areas, according to results released Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Education.

The test, called the Program for International Student Assessment, has been administered every three years since 2000 to 15-year-old students across the world, The Wall Street Journal reported. The achievement test, coordinated by the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, was given to students in 60 countries last year.

American education officials expressed disappointment with the average to sub-par results, renewing their goal to improve student performance in the next few years.

“We’re in the middle of the pack; that’s not where we want to be,” said Stuart Kerachsky, deputy commissioner at the National Center for Education Statistics, an arm of the Department of Education that administers the PISA test in the U.S.

The test–which measures aptitude in reading, mathematics and science–is designed to compare the academic performance of students from different countries.

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After announcing the 49 winning applicants for the $650 Investing in Innovation competition, the U.S. Department of Education has now put online the scores, judges’ comments, and more details about each project.

Trying to make sense of the numerical scores for the validation and development award winners is, at least for this blogger, an exercise in futility. And it’s all because of a statistical process called “standardization.”

For me, the quest to understand the i3 scoring system began with this question: Did Saint Vrain School District really have the best application of them all?

Because of the large number of applicants and judges in the validation and development categories, the department used standardization to make sure the scoring was done as fairly as possible. (For more about this, read the department’s explanation on page 2 of this FAQ document.) It’s important to note that for the 19 scale-up applicants, standardization was not used, and their scores are their raw scores.

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