Education at a Glance 2011: OECD Indicators

This inaptly named annual report from the OECD (the volume runs to some 500 pages) offers a plethora of data points for member nations looking to size themselves up against their peers. It will tell you how many students graduate from high school and from college—and the relative earnings of each group (a college degree pays off most handily in Brazil and the Eastern European countries). It will tell you how much is spent per pupil—and what the public and private investment in education is (only Chile, South Korea, and the United Kingdom see more than 20 percent of their education funding coming from the private sector). Along with all these crunched numbers, the OECD provides an interesting analysis of how schools are held to account in its member states. Generally, a combination of three mechanisms—regulatory, performance, and market accountability—is used, though the balance within this combo is shifting. Regulatory accountability has historically been the main story in most member states, but performance accountability—in the form of low-stakes national assessments (now given in thirty of the thirty-five member states at the primary level) and high-stakes national examinations (given in twenty-three of thirty-five nations at the upper secondary level)—is gaining ground. (As for market accountability, we’re told that it’s “emphasized” by countries as important but is rarely seen in practice, as the necessary conditions for its success—widespread school choice, student-based funding, and information access among them—simply don’t exist.) If you’re interested in another pile of informative data—or want more than just the skinny on accountability abroad, dive in.