Quality, assessments, and education reforms

• In Event: Data for accountability in education: Global trends in school reform

Proposal

Numerical indicators to monitor and assess government performance have become an increasingly salient feature of international relations (Kelley & Simmons, 2015). These indicators can influence state behavior by triggering status competition at the regional or international level, catalyzing domestic political activism, or encouraging international pressures from intergovernmental or nongovernmental organizations (Kelley & Simmons, 2020). By virtue of comparison, countries engage in acts of mimicking and policy borrowing at a global scale in order to institute changes that reflect their national political needs (Steiner-Khamsi & Waldow, 2018). Furthermore, countries are affected when test scores increase or decrease, triggering domestic upheavals and applying pressures for reform. This paper focuses on the proliferation of assessments and how they are associated with reform efforts around the world. Through analysis of various reform efforts that specifically focus on “performance indicators” with an emphasis on international comparison, national assessments, evaluation, quality of learning, and benchmarking, this study reveals the trends in discourse and efforts by nation-states and international organizations/transnational actors to reform for better learning outcomes.

Author

• Rie Kijima, University of Toronto