Trying to understand PISA is analogous to the parable of the blind men and the elephant. There are many facets of the PISA program, and thus many ways to both applaud and critique this ambitious international program of assessment that has gained enormous importance in the crafting of contemporary educational policy. One of the facets discussed in this paper is the issue of the comparability of the cognitions elicited by items across national and linguistic cultures. Valid interpretations of PISA results cannot proceed without assurance that items across nations are interpreted in the same way. A second facet examined is the association of PISA with economic outcomes for nations, still an unsettled area of importance. A third facet discussed is the search in PISA data for universally applicable instructional techniques, a possible will-o-the-wisp. A fourth facet examined are differences in cross-national attitudes toward the PISA subjects and how those affect test scores. Given these many facets of the program, a fifth facet that is arguably the most important of all the issues associated with PISA is discussed, namely the interpretation of PISA scores.

Teacher assessment using value-added models of teacher efficacy suffer from a fatal flaw, namely, that a myriad of exogenous (unaccounted for) variables affect student test score growth and result in unstable estimates of teacher competency from class to class and year to year.

This paper points out that the most popular current school reforms offered have failed to accomplish their goal because they fail to understand the fundamental problem of American schools, namely, income inequality and the poverty that accompanies such inequality. Prescriptions to fix our schools cannot work if the diagnosis about what is wrong with them is in error.

David Berliner's 2005 Presidential Invited Speech to the American Educational Research Association meeting in Montreal, Canada, May, 2005.

An examination of theories of child rearing espoused by the Christian Right from the perspective of modern psychology.