Many Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries publish school rankings annually, based on the aggregated student performance of different schools in the (high-stakes) board examinations. The literature cites two reasons in favour of the public availability of information on school performance: first, the highly valued…

Educators and governments are paying increasing attention to international comparisons as they seek to develop effective policies to improve the performance of their education systems. Data from the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) are useful in revealing best practices across the world. Current data show that the United…

Whether to adopt national standards and tests has long been a subject of lively debate in the United States. With 47 states now participating in the Common Core State Standards Initiative, and a commitment from Education Secretary Arne Duncan to allocate hundreds of millions in stimulus funds to the development of common tests, the country is…