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1 Introduction and Rationale
Pages 4-11

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From page 4...
... Data are not collected regularly, systematically, or with enough coordination either to satisfy natural curiosity about education systems around the world or to answer the questions of researchers and policy makers about changes over time in education in a variety of countries. Trend data are needed on many aspects of education.
From page 5...
... education policy to domestic or international education research (Lagemann, 2000) , and widely shared assumptions that other areas of the world are simply not relevant to the United States.
From page 6...
... Fundamentally, international comparative studies contribute to basic education research by documenting the existence of a much broader array of educational practices and outcomes than is available in the United States alone. International studies, however, can do much more than this.
From page 7...
... That report made extensive use of findings from then-current national and international comparative studies of student achievement, portraying them in provocative terms.2 The data cited in that report seized the interest of policy makers, who had little previous knowledge of or interest in comparative international education statistics but who subsequently evolved into strong proponents of comparative research at both state and cross-national lev2For example, "International comparisons of student achievement .
From page 8...
... Most people would be reluctant to conduct controlled experiments with their children's educations, but naturally oc3For example, a July 1994 NCES strategy document noted, "Education policy makers and analysts now routinely request information about how American schooling compares to that found in other countries .... The effort to provide a quality education to all of America's students has increasingly used international comparisons to assess our school's effectiveness and to generate ideas about ways to reform our schools" (U.S.
From page 9...
... Studies such as PISA, for example, demonstrate that high average performance does not have to be associated with the wide disparities in performance found in the United States. · International comparative research can help researchers and policy makers to observe and characterize consequences of different practices and policies for different groups, under different circumstances.
From page 10...
... 5 Videotape Classroom Study helped to raise the technical sophistication of video research methods in the United States and elsewhere. Furthermore, questions of sampling, instrument design, data gathering, and data analysis that had to be addressed in the second and third international mathematics studies yielded results and experience that have been useful in national surveys of achievement.
From page 11...
... INTRODUCTION AND RATIONALE 11 tionship between the practice and desired outcomes in different settings. More often, informal experiments initiated by practitioners using innovations from other countries attract the attention of researchers post hoc; policy makers call on researchers to investigate promising practices; and, of course, researchers themselves may initiate exploratory studies.


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