The Great German School Turnaround
The European country managed to raise test scores while reducing educational inequality. But with the dramatic influx of migrants, will its success last?
To make a good national school system, a country needs to help its most disadvantaged students. So says Andreas Schleicher, the man in charge of the most authoritative international test. “It’s the capacity of those systems to invest in those students from disadvantaged backgrounds” says Schleicher, the education director for the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), which administers the triennial Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) among its roughly three dozen member countries. “What those education systems do is attract the best teachers and best principals to [the] most challenging classrooms and schools.” Moreover, he notes, “reducing inequality is not just a social imperative but an economic imperative.”
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Become a SubscriberWhile U.S. students have scored in the bottom half of nations on the PISA and have made no significant gains over 10 years, Germany—Schleicher’s home country—has managed to increase test scores while decreasing inequality in its school system. In fact, Germany was one of just three countries surveyed by the OECD that reduced inequality while raising math scores between 2003 and 2012, the other two being Mexico and Turkey.
