Rethinking cause and effect: Analyzing economic growth and PISA scores over a period of 15 years

The notion that scores from international large-scale assessments (ILSAs) can predict the economic future of a nation is common among policymakers, journalists and the wider public. This chapter aims at rethinking this notion by examining evidence from the OECD’s PISA study. We first show that PISA 2000 scores fail to predict economic growth. We then show that countries that enjoyed an increase in PISA scores experienced economic growth prior to this improvement, and countries that showed losses in PISA scores suffered from economic recession before the decline in educational achievement. ILSAs’ results, thus, appear to respond to economic changes rather than predict them.