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This paper examines the outstanding performance of Shanghai, China on PISA 2009 and its effects on other national systems and within the global education policy field. The OECD's PISA is helping to create this field by constituting the globe as a commensurate space of school system performance. The effects of Shanghai's success are considered in three other national contexts: the USA, England and Australia. We combine (a) analysis of data from more than 30 research interviews with senior policy actors at the OECD, the IEA and within Australia and England; and (b) document analysis of policy speeches, commissioned research reports and media coverage from the three national contexts. Shanghai's performance in PISA 2009 produced a global "PISA-shock" that has repositioned this system as a significant new "reference society," shifting the global gaze in education from Finland to the "East" at the beginning of the so-called "Asian century."

An analysis of national programs for monitoring student achievement in Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States finds that "national assessment" promotes a view of "standards" which is narrow, limiting, and definitely not conducive to the emergence of flexible and imaginative educational policies designed to cope with the future. (BRR)

This paper addresses two important issues concerning US education: first do monetary inputs affect educational achievement; and second, if monetary inputs do affect educational achievement, how does the US compare internationally, when considering both achievement and fiscal effort? We use several national and international reading and mathematics achievement tests as educational outputs; and US state and international income and educational expenditures per capita as inputs. Given our use of aggregate data we focus on describing the relationship between educational inputs and outputs at the state or national level. Still, our results indicate that there is an association between relative fiscal effort and achievement. We find that the US performs as expected, given its income and relative fiscal effort. We also find several US states to be as efficient as top performing foreign nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on an essay written especially as a set of reflections on a series of images regarding education systems in the United States. It attempts to identify not facts but perceptions, which often turn out to be more impressive and influential than the events and policies to which they relate. As an essay, it makes no pretensions to formal academic accuracy, although it does draw upon an extensive literature and a decade of close observation of the educational scene in many parts of the United States. It is deliberately biased, focusing upon the perceived and admired virtues of the system and its history. The importance publicly attached to the educational enterprise in the United States and the service in the cathedral may stand as an image. New York is of course a curious, indeed unique, place in that it is both deeply conscious of its own identity and yet stands as an epitome of the United States, on which much national attention is concentrated and whose problems today may become those of the nation tomorrow. It is further noted in the article that the style and tone are distinct indeed from those of Washington or of the State capital and reflect a very different strain in the American education.