Last winter, Clayton sophomores sat down to take the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). PISA, an international standardized assessment, serves to compare the skills of students worldwide in the application of math, reading, and science.

The test is administered every three years, and the international contractor tells countries to randomly select schools and, within those schools, randomly select 35 students. In countries with low populations, all of the students aged 15 are tested. Clayton was one of the 100 randomly selected schools for participation in the test, and the only of those schools that elected to test all of its sophomore class

One purpose of the test for Clayton was an ACT/PISA collaboration to determine whether PLAN test scores could accurately gauge scores on international tests. However, instead of testing the required 35 students, Clayton requested extra tests in order to test every sophomore.

The decision to expand the testing group was made to test Clayton’s international competitiveness. Superintendant Mary Herrmann was pleased that the District had seized upon this opportunity.

“Our decision to participate in PISA demonstrated our District-wide commitment to continual growth,” Herrmann said. “These very positive results are a tribute to our students, staff and community.”

It was especially important to take the exam because it is unlikely that Clayton will be selected to participate in the study again, despite advocacy on the part of the District.

“Participation in this study provided a unique opportunity to do some international benchmarking and find out how our students performed relative to their peers in top performing countries,” Herrmann said. “We believe it is our responsibility to prepare our students to be globally competitive.”

Clayton was treated as it’s own country for the sake of comparison against other countries. When compared to the participating countries, Clayton placed first in reading and science and second math. Shanghai students placed second in the former instances and first in the latter.

“Our Clayton students performed very well internationally,” Herrmann said. “These results affirm that Clayton is truly a world class District.”

For District Chief Communications Officer Chris Tennill, the results served as an affirmation of Clayton’s standing as a world-class school.

“We’ve always feel like we do a really good job here and we’ve asked for years on surveys if people think we have a world-class education and they said, ‘Yeah, we think you do,’” Tennill said. “Now we’ve got some data to back that up.”

While Tennill still feels that Clayton can always improve the education it provides, he thinks that the results serve as an answer to self-evaluations of the District’s flaws.

“It gives a reason to pause and just say for a second, ‘You know what? We are doing a pretty good job with what we’ve got going here,’” Tennill said.

However, as well as showcasing Clayton’s relatively impressive scores, the results also reaffirmed the United States’ trailing spot in international education rankings. While Clayton did perform well for a United States school, Clayton performed at the same level as an average school in Shanghai. Tennill, however, still views the results as positive in light of the “documented gap” between the U.S. education system and higher-performing countries worldwide.

“Even the average schools in Shanghai, Taiwan, Singapore, Finland, that are beating us [the United States] on other tests, test better than the top schools in the states,” Tennill said.

Tennill also concedes that, if all schools in the U.S. were to be tested to the same extent as Clayton, that other high-performing districts would have similar scores.

“There are probably a lot of other schools, like New Trier, and some of your Chicago ring schools and some of the other schools that are in a similar school consortium that we have, that are all high-achieving, small, extremely affluent school districts that would have done just as well on this test,” Tennill said. “We’re not saying that we’re unique. We’re the only ones who put ourselves out there.”

However, Tennill also thinks that Clayton’s scores are particularly impressive given Clayton’s demographics.

“Yes, we are an affluent, suburban school district, but we’re not homogenous by any stretch of the imagination,” Tennill said. “We have 22 percent African-American students, we have 16 percent of our students who are eligible for free and reduced lunch. You don’t see that type of diversity in schools in other countries, especially high-achieving schools in other countries. Somewhere deep in this is the fact that education does work.”

Moving forward, for both the Clayton School District and the United States as a whole, will require a complete reevaluation of our educational system.

Educational Researcher Andrew Chen, of MIT and Edutron Corporation, commends Clayton for taking a risk and testing its students so publicly with such successful scores, but still contends that Clayton would not perform favorably in comparison to top schools in a top-performing country like Shanghai. Students in higher-performing countries are held to a higher expectation and behave as such.

“That’s the scary thing; they work much harder,” Chen said.

Chen doesn’t believe that improving the American education system would be as easy as adopting the curriculums and textbooks. Many of his adjustments are related to classroom mentality and the attitude of students and their community.

“More ethics from students [would improve performance] and that involves both the kids and the parents,” Chen said. “Throw a lot of the accountability back on the kids.”

Additionally, Chen believes that there should be more standardized testing used nationwide, but more as a baseline than the actual expectation. He believes that the emerging standardized of the past few years are a first step in this direction.

“We should aspire to go even higher [than standard requirements], especially for Clayton,” Chen said. “The common standard is just a basic accountability measure for the 50 states.“

Despite Chen’s emphasis on more standardization, he acknowledges that this is not a quick fix. He believes that students’ performance will improve if their teachers have a greater, more advanced understanding of the material that allows for more advanced pedagogy.

“Standardization is definitely happening, but that will not automatically fix our problem,” Chen said. “Even if the standards are perfect, that doesn’t mean the student will be learning. The crux is in the teachers. What’s happening in the classroom?”

To see the School District of Clayton’s website concerning the PISA results, click here.