PISA scores are controversial to use as a comparison between countries. And yes China, Macau, and Hong Kong are likely using some creative strategies to boost t

PISA scores are controversial to use as a comparison between countries. And yes China, Macau, and Hong Kong are likely using some creative strategies to boost their scores. "This year, Chinese administrators chose their students from a group of cities and regions aptly named B-S-J-G, after Beijing, a province-level municipality, Jiangsu, a province on the eastern coast of the country, Guangdong, a southern coastal province, and Shanghai, a province-level municipality. Previously, Chinese authorities had chosen Shanghai as mainland China’s sole representative, whose students finished at the top of all three subject areas in both the previous two PISA studies in 2012 and 2009. Now, if all countries were to take this approach, we would see London selected to be the sole representative of Britain, or Boston and its suburbs representing the U.S. This year, in fact, saw a separate score calculated for Massachusetts, which if taken as the nation’s results, would grab the top spot in reading with eight other nations, 2nd place in science with ten other nations, and 12th in math. If we dig deeper into the sampling, we come across another potential problem with the PISA testing: that the sampling done on mainland China (Beijing, Jiangsu, Guangdong and Shanghai) and other cities was not taken from a wide variety of schools. Rather, the very best schools were chosen and the very best students were cherry-picked from those schools." https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2017/01/04/are-the-pisa-education-results-rigged/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2017/01/04/are-the-pis...