What explains the Big Pisa Decline of 2022? It's not COVID
Main candidate is they changed the testing format for 2 of the 3 tests
Reader notice: I have decided to try paywalling everything in December since I need to buy baby food.
You may have seen posts like this:
Two explanations are commonly offered:
Phones/computers got suddenly more addictive than before (Tiktok-era)
COVID was bad for learning.
Let’s start with the second. PISA tests measure in part material covered by the school curriculum, but mainly they measure intelligence (g factor). COVID lockdowns and infections probably can’t affect intelligence in the long term (in most cases anyway), but they can affect learning in the short term. As such, we should be able to find such effects by suitable studies. I looked up some large-scale studies for Claire’s own country, Australia, and mine, Denmark.