Education Program Director Barbara Chow, writing with Bob Wise of the Alliance for Excellent Education for the Hechinger Report:

Of all the daunting challenges the nation faces—economic, social, environmental, and educational—perhaps the most vexing for the future is whether schools are preparing all children to apply what they are learning to make the critical decisions required to power the economy and democracy.

Administered every three years by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, PISA measures whether all of a modern nation’s children receive this education. Today, the honest answer is “no.” But the United States is planting the seeds of a movement to prepare today’s students to tackle tomorrow’s complex problems.

Despite various names and descriptions, the movement’s uniform objective is to ensure that all students graduate from high school with the ability to build on their knowledge to think critically, solve problems, and communicate effectively.