Page 1 Benchmarking for Success: Ensuring U.S. Students Receive a World-Class Education : (A report by the National Governors Association, the Council of Chief State School Officers, and Achieve, Inc.)

International Benchmarking Advisory Group - Co-Chairs:
Governor Janet Napolitano, Arizona
Governor Sonny Perdue, Georgia
Craig R. Barrett, Chairman of the Board, Intel Corporation
Members:
Steven A. Ballmer, Chief Executive Officer, Microsoft CorporationSteven A. Ballmer, Chief Executive Officer, Microsoft Corporation
Governor Donald L. Carcieri, Rhode Island
Mitchell Chester, Commissioner of Education, Massachusetts Department of Elementary and
Secondary Education
Christopher Edley, Jr., Dean and Professor of Law, University of California–Berkeley
Chester E. Finn, Jr., President,Thomas B. Fordham Institute
Beverly L. Hall, Superintendent, Atlanta Public Schools
James B. Hunt, Jr., Chairman, the James B. Hunt, Jr. Institute for Educational Leadership and Policy at the
University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill and former Governor of North Carolina
Kati Haycock, President,The EducationTrust
Dwight Jones, Commissioner of Education, Colorado Department of Education
GovernorTim Kaine,Virginia
Janet Murguía, President and Chief Executive Officer, National Council of La Raza
Thomas Payzant, Professor of Practice, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Charles B. Reed, Chancellor, California State University
RichardW. Riley, Senior Partner with EducationCounsel LLC, former U.S. Secretary of Education, and former
Governor of South Carolina
Andreas Schleicher, Head of the Indicators and Analysis Division, Directorate for Education,Organisation
for Economic Co-Operation and Development
William H. Schmidt, University Distinguished Professor, Michigan State University
Vivien Stewart,Vice President for Education, Asia Society
Phillip UriTreisman, Executive Director,The Charles A. Dana Center at the University ofTexas at Austin
Bob Wise, President, Alliance for Excellent Education and former Governor ofWestVirginia

6    State leaders already are deeply engaged in efforts to raise standards, advance teaching quality, and improve low-performing schools. International benchmarking provides an additional tool for  making that process more effective, offering insights and ideas that cannot be garnered solely from looking within and across state lines.To that end, the partner organizations and International Benchmarking Advisory Group call on state leaders to take the following actions:

Action 1: Upgrade state standards by adopting a common core of internationally benchmarked
standards in math and language arts for grades K-12 to ensure that students are equipped with the
necessary knowledge and skills to be globally competitive.
Action 2: Leverage states’ collective influence to ensure that textbooks, digital media, curricula, and
assessments are aligned to internationally benchmarked standards and draw on lessons from highperforming
nations and states.
Action 3: Revise state policies for recruiting, preparing, developing, and supporting teachers and
school leaders to reflect the human capital practices of top-performing nations and states around the
world.
Action 4: Hold schools and systems accountable through monitoring, interventions, and support to
ensure consistently high performance, drawing upon international best practices.
Action 5: Measure state-level education performance globally by examining student achievement
and attainment in an international context to ensure that, over time, students are receiving the education
they need to compete in the 21st century economy.

28 Singapore’s approach to developing leaders is widely
admired too. Singapore screens prospective school
leaders using a rigorous process and then provides a
six-month training program run by the National Institute
of Education. The program includes management
and leadership courses from leading executive
training programs; one day per week spent in schools
to come up with innovative solutions to practical
problems; group projects; two-week overseas placements
with major corporations; and rigorous evaluation.
111 Great Britain recently revamped its national
approach to developing principals based on a careful
study of that model.112
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30 Action 4: Hold schools and systems accountable
through monitoring, interventions, and support to
ensure consistently high performance, drawing
upon international best practices.
Top-performing nations exhibit a wide range of different
approaches to the functions commonly defined
in the U.S. under the rubric of “accountability.” But
recent research suggests that such nations share several
key strategic priorities and employ a broader
range of tools for managing those priorities than is
evident in this country......
most high-performing nations use multiple
mechanisms to monitor school performance, including
annual student assessments in key grades and
whole-school reviews or “inspections.” Such inspections
evaluate the performance of a school against a
broad set of criteria, including, but not limited to, student
achievement and also examine the school practices
that contribute to student results.


Second, some top-performing countries have
adopted policies to ensure that every student succeeds
by monitoring students’ progress and intervening
to prevent them from falling too far behind....

“Another reason for the new approach is the fact
that students use their final school reports in basic
education when applying to upper secondary education
institutions,” says Reijo Laukkanen of the Finnish
National Board of Education. “Thus, the new rules
also safeguard the equality of students.”121
-----
31 One area
that states might examine closely as part of their
benchmarking work is how other nations use assessment
for accountability. What kinds of assessments
do they administer in which grades and subjects?
What content and skills do those tests measure?
What kinds of questions do they use—multiple
choice or more open-ended problems? How are
assessments scored? And how are the results published
and used for accountability purposes?

Action 5: Measure state-level education performance
globally by examining student achievement and
attainment in an international context to ensure that,
over time, students are receiving the education they
need to compete in the 21st century economy....
states can best address this action step
through cooperative action to find a streamlined and
cost-effective solution for generating international
student achievement comparisons. Since all states
already are required to participate in the National
Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), leaders
can use their collective leverage to work with the
National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) to
explore the feasibility of upgrading NAEP to yield
results that are comparable with existing international
assessments such asTIMSS, PIRLS, and PISA.,,,

Since PISA assesses 15-year-olds in participating
nations,NAGB would need to explore how to adjust
NAEP samples to include a comparable group of
young people, as well as how to incorporate the
more open-ended assessment items that characterize
PISA.------


37
Countries
such as Canada,Australia, Germany, and Spain
have federal-style education systems where states
retain a great deal of authority over education. And in
many of those countries, states are taking a leading
role in benchmarking educational performance and
policies.....America can learn from that example, too: While
states must take the lead, the federal government can
help. And the federal government can do that best
by playing an enabling role grounded in a new vision
for the historic state–federal partnership in education—
one that is less restrictive and mandate-driven
and more encouraging of innovation.
----------------

39. V.Conclusion
The federal government can help, but states must lead. They must look beyond their borders and America’s
shores to fully understand how to benchmark expectations for student learning. They must significantly
broaden the policy lens by drawing lessons from the highest performing, most equitable, and fastest advancing
nations and states around the globe and adapting the very best educational practices to incorporate here at
home.
If states in other countries can shape the response to the global education imperative, states in America must
do so as well.



http://www.achieve.org/files/BenchmarkingforSuccess.pdf