This is the most important post you will read this month or maybe even this year. It refutes the basis of American education policy.
This is major study of the relationship between scores on PISA and economic growth. It demonstrates that there is none.
It was written by Hikaru Komatsu (Associate Professor at National Taiwan University) and Jeremy Rappleye (Associate Professor at Kyoto University, Graduate School of Education) for the Network for International Policies and Cooperation in Education and Training. The authors criticize the work of Hoover economist Eric Hanushek and demonstrate how his theories of human capital development were widely adopted by American and European organizations and became the convention wisdom.
Komatsu and Rappleye demonstrate the flaws in Hanushek’s theories, which have led to unprecedented emphasis on improving standardized test scores in many nations.
They begin by reviewing a paper published by the European Commission, based on Hanushek’s human…
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Crazy Normal - the Classroom Exposé 
Neil Murphy
July 25, 2020 at 07:36
County, State and Federal Departments of Education need to read Diane Ravitch’s post over Hikauru Komatsu’s and Jeremy Rappleye’s article addressing PISA scores. For decades, American educators have had to stomach harsh criticism coming from politicians and the press over the low performance of American students on international tests.
According to Komatsu’s and Rappleye’s study, there is no correlation between high PISA scores and economic growth, which contradicts the claims of Hanushek’s previous findings. Unfortunately, Hanushek has the ear of European countries and the United States. Unfortunately, whenever there is credible research that contradicts Hanushek’s claims, these studies go unnoticed. Ms. Ravitch raised the question as to why? Why do European and U.S. leaders ignore credible studies that undermine Hanushek’s claims? Ravitch didn’t provide any answers, but I might have some.
Hanushek’s claims have fueled a whole sub-economy–test preparation. The testing industry is huge, and this industry has lobbyists that have an omnipotent hold over our educational and political leaders. Plus, a whole cottage industry of tutorial centers have sprouted across the United States being partly buoyed by the notion that the dismal performance of U.S. students on PISA tests is going to doom the economic prosperity of this country and our young people. The whole testing industry has too much influence over education.
It would be very interesting for researchers to discover how much money is being donated to political and educational leaders, who hold public office, by lobbyists of the testing industry.
Lloyd Lofthouse
July 25, 2020 at 08:49
The Washington Post ran a report on that issue: “Report: Big education firms spend millions lobbying for pro-testing policies”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2015/03/30/report-big-education-firms-spend-millions-lobbying-for-pro-testing-policies/
David Coleman, the CEO of SAT and the co-author of the Common Core, infamously said, “No One Gives a Shit What You Think or Feel” is the CEO of SAT and his pay is $900k annually in salary and benefits. and he has about a dozen separate offices. David Colemn is the monster that talked Bill Gates into spending billions to reinvent (destroy) public education.
https://theline.edublogs.org/2011/11/02/common-core-director-to-you-no-one-gives-a-st-what-you-think-or-feel/
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/college-sat-coleman/
“A new report by the Rand Corporation evaluating yet another Bill Gates education debacle — this time for teacher evaluation — was discussed recently in both Forbes by Rick Hess and Bloomberg by Cathy O’Neil. Shane Vander Hart at Truth in American Education also analyzed the Bloomberg piece. This Gates boondoggle spent $575 million (of which only $212 million came from the Gates Foundation) on three public school districts and four charter management organizations:”
https://thenationalpulse.com/commentary/bill-gates-education-experiment-fails-again-taxpayers-foot-300-million-bill/