Thursday Interview: Andreas Schleicher and What We Can Learn about Education from International Data

Join me Thursday, April 25th, for a live and interactive FutureofEducation.com conversation with Andreas Schleicher, Deputy Director for Education and Skills and Special Advisor on Education Policy to the Secretary-General of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). Andreas specifically has oversight of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).

PISA is an international study that was launched by the OECD in 1997. It aims to evaluate education systems worldwide every three years by assessing 15-year-olds' competencies in the key subjects: reading, mathematics and science. PISA emphasizes functional skills that students have acquired as they near the end of compulsory schooling, and includes measures of general or cross-curricular competencies, such as problem solving. To date over 70 countries and economies have participated in PISA.

The PISA results have generated very significant reactions, which include: the focus on Finland's educational system because of the unexpected and consistently top results from Finnish students; the highest-place results for Shanghai in 2009 when China students were included for the first time; and the comparatively low results for the United States (in 2009, 31st in Maths, 23rd in Sciences, and 17th in Reading).

We'll talk with Andreas about what data from high-performing school systems around the world tells about best practices in education, and look to uncover promising practices and the future of education internationally. This is a special event held in partnership with the Asia Society as part of their year-long Global Learning for Educators webinar series.

Date: Thursday, April 25th, 2013
Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Blackboard Collaborate (formerly Elluminate). Log in at http://www.futureofed.info. The Blackboard Collaborate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. To make sure that your computer is configured for Blackboard Collaborate, please visit the support and configuration page.
Recording:  A full Blackboard Collaborate recording is at https://sas.elluminate.com/p.jnlp?psid=2013-04-24.1706.M.9E9FE58134BE68C3B413F24B3586CF.vcr&sid=2008350 and an audio mp3 recording us at http://audio.edtechlive.com/foe/andreaspisa.mp3 and at http://www.futureofeducation.com.
Mightybell:  A Mightybell space with interview resources and to continue the conversation is at https://mightybell.com/spaces/47034.

Andreas Schleicher is Deputy Director for Education and Skills and Special Advisor on Education Policy to OECD’s Secretary-General. He also provides strategic oversight over OECD’s work on the development and utilisation of skills and their social and economic outcomes. This includes the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), the OECD Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC), the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) and the development and analysis of benchmarks on the performance of education systems (INES). Before joining the OECD, he was Director for Analysis at the International Association for Educational Achievement (IEA). He studied Physics in Germany and received a degree in Mathematics and Statistics in Australia. He is the recipient of numerous honours and awards, including the “Theodor Heuss” prize, awarded in the name of the first president of the Federal Republic of Germany for “exemplary democratic engagement." He holds an honorary Professorship at the University of Heidelberg.

Tuesday Interview: The Truth About Testing with Jim Popham

Join me Tuesday, April 23rd, for a live and interactive FutureofEducation.com conversation with W. James Popham, author of (among many other books) The Truth About Testing: An Educator's Call to Action and Unlearned Lessons: Six Stumbling Blocks to Our Schools Success.

"Why is it," Jim writes, "that today's educators seem almost compelled to replicate their predecessors' blunders?" We'll talk with Jim about "the absurdity and serious destructive consequences of today's testing programs" and why it's "nonsense" to think that large-scale, high-stakes testing programs are the best way to determine which schools or teachers are failing and which are succeeding. We'll also discuss the ultimate impact on both teachers and students of this "measurement mess" and what we can do about it.

Date: Tuesday, April 23rd, 2013
Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Blackboard Collaborate (formerly Elluminate). Log in at http://www.futureofed.info. The Blackboard Collaborate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. To make sure that your computer is configured for Blackboard Collaborate, please visit the support and configuration page.
Recording:  A full Blackboard Collaborate recording is at https://sas.elluminate.com/p.jnlp?psid=2013-04-23.0918.M.9E9FE58134BE68C3B413F24B3586CF.vcr&sid=2008350 and an audio mp3 recording is at http://audio.edtechlive.com/foe/pophamtesting.mp3 and at http://www.futureofeducation.com.
Mightybell:  A Mightybell space with interview resources and to continue the conversation is at https://mightybell.com/spaces/46394.

W. James Popham, professor emeritus at University of California Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, has spent the bulk of his educational career as a teacher. His first teaching assignment, for example, was in a small eastern Oregon high school where he taught English and social studies while serving as yearbook advisor, class sponsor, and unpaid tennis coach. That recompense meshed ideally with the quality of his coaching.

Most of Dr. Popham's teaching career took place at UCLA where, for nearly 30 years, he taught courses in instructional methods for prospective teachers as well as courses in evaluation and measurement for graduate students. At UCLA he won several distinguished teaching awards. In January 2000, he was recognized by UCLA Today as one of UCLA’s top 20 professors of the 20th century. (He notes that the 20th century was a full-length century, unlike the current abbreviated one.) In 1992, he took early retirement from UCLA upon learning that emeritus professors received free parking.

Because at UCLA he was acutely aware of the perishability of professors who failed to publish, he spent his non-teaching hours affixing words to paper. The result: 30 books, 200 journal articles, 50 research reports, and 175 papers presented before research societies. Although not noted in his official vita, while at UCLA he also authored 1,426 grocery lists.

His most recent books are Classroom Assessment: What Teachers Need to Know, 6th Ed. (2010) and Assessment for Educational Leaders (2006), Allyn & Bacon; The Truth About Testing (2001), Test Better, Teach Better (2003), Transformative Assessment (2008) and Instruction that Measures Up (2009) ASCD; America’s “Failing” Schools (2005) and Mastering Assessment (2006), Routledge; and Unlearned Lessons (2009) Harvard Education Press. He encourages purchase of these books because he regards their semi-annual royalties as psychologically reassuring.

In 1978, Dr. Popham was elected to the presidency of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). He was also the founding editor of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, a quarterly journal published by AERA. A Fellow of the Association, he has attended each year's AERA meeting since his first in 1958. He is inordinately compulsive.

In 1968, Dr. Popham established IOX Assessment Associates, an R&D group that formerly created statewide student achievement tests for a dozen states. He has personally passed all of those tests, largely because of his unlimited access to the tests’ answer keys.

In 2002 the National Council on Measurement in Education presented him with its Award for Career Contributions to Educational Measurement. In 2006 he was awarded a Certificate of Recognition by the National Association of Test Directors. In 2009, he was appointed to be a board member of the National Assessment Governing Board. Dr. Popham’s complete 44-page, single-spaced vita can be requested. It is really dull reading.

(Bio from Corwin Press, humor from Jim.)