How can we measure what makes a school system work? Andreas Schleicher walks us through the PISA test, a global measurement that ranks countries against one another — then uses that same data to help schools improve. Watch to find out where your country stacks up, and learn the single factor that makes some systems outperform others.

TED – “Andreas Schleicher: Use data to build better schools”

These are not direct quotes from the end of the talk, but I tried to capture the basic messages (the TED transcript is not posted yet):

Range of factors true of high-performing PISA schools:

• Leaders have convinced citizens to value education more than consumerism – consumption today.
• Belief and practices that all children are capable of success. Expect all children to succeed.
• Growth mindsets.
• Diversified and differentiated instruction. Personalized learning.
• Clear and ambitious standards that are known, understood and pursued.
• High quality, highly trained, collaborative teachers. Intelligent pathways for growth.
• Clear on good performance, and enable teachers level of autonomy to reach those performance standards. Not prescribed what to teach. Autonomy is not independence, though.
• Shift from delivered knowledge to enabling user-generated wisdom.
• Moved from administrative forms of accountability and control to professional forms of work organizations. Provide development for pedagogical innovation.
• Looking outwards.
• Achievement across entire system. Every school is part of success – it’s systemic.
• Align policies and make them coherent. Consistent implementation.

A truly great talk. Schleicher admits that there are no “copy and paste” approaches to school innovation and transformation, and I love his use of the data and analysis to inspire thinking about what can work for other schools. It’s not the usual “country competition” talk using PISA. It’s so much more.