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Lessons from PISA: Student Performance in the US Presentation: Andreas Schleicher Head of the Indicators and Analysis Division, OECD Directorate for Education Discussants: Grover J. (Russ) Whitehurst Director, Institute of Education Sciences

Friday, February 8, 2008
210 Cannon House Office Building
Washington DC 20515
9:00-10:00 AM Presentation, 8:30 AM Registration

Event Description:

Are students well prepared for future challenges? Can they analyse, reason and communicate effectively? Do they have the capacity to continue learning throughout life? The OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) answers these questions and more, through its surveys of 15-year-olds in the principal industrialised countries. Andreas Schleicher, the Head of the Indicators and Analysis Division of the OECD Directorate for Education, reports on the findings of the most recent comprehensive international test of student knowledge across the principal industrialized countries and the implications for the United States. 

Biographies:

Andreas Schleicher has been Head of the Indicators and Analysis Division at the OECD Directorate for Education since 2002. As Division Head, Andreas Schleicher’s responsibilities include directing the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the OECD Indicators of Education Systems programme (INES) and steering the development of new projects such as the OECD Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) and the OECD Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC).

At the OECD, Andreas Schleicher has also held the posts of Deputy Head of the Statistics and Indicators Division in the former Directorate for Education, Employment, Labour and Social Affairs (1997-2002) and Project Manager in the OECD Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) (1994-1996). Before joining the OECD, he served as Director for Analysis at the International Association for Educational Achievement (IEA) within the Institute for Educational Research in the Netherlands (1993-1994) and International Co-ordinator for the IEA Reading Literacy Study, at the University of Hamburg, Germany (1989-1992). Originally a graduate in physics, he subsequently studied mathematics at Deakin University in Australia, where his master's thesis received the Bruce Choppin Award.

Grover J. (Russ) Whitehurst was appointed in 2002 to a six-year term as the first director of the Institute of Education Sciences, the research arm of the U.S. Department of Education.  The Institute includes the National Center for Education Statistics, the National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, the National Center for Education Research, and the National Center for Special Education Research.   Whitehurst previously served as U.S. assistant secretary for educational research and improvement.  Prior to beginning federal service, he was Leading Professor of Psychology and Pediatrics and Chairman of the Department of Psychology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.  During his academic career, Whitehurst published five books, and more than 100 research papers on language and reading readiness in children.  He developed programs for enhancing children’s language development that are widely used in preschool programs in the U.S. and other countries. Whitehurst received a Ph.D. in experimental child psychology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in 1970.