J Educ Change (2008) 9:317–320

DOI 10.1007/s10833-008-9075-9

BOOK REVIEW

Review of McKinsey report: How the world’s best

performing school systems come out on top

Henry Braun

Published online: 17 July 2008

Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008

These are heady times in the world of international survey assessments. The Organization
for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which sponsors the Program in
International Student Assessment (PISA) and the International Adult Literacy Strategy
(IALS), and the International Education Agency (IEA), which sponsors the Trends In
Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Progress in International Reading and
Literacy Study (PIRLS), have achieved substantial, if indirect, influence on education
policy in many nations. Over the last two decades, these four assessments have expanded
in both scope and coverage. Each successive administration has involved a larger number
of jurisdictions and garnered greater coverage in the media when scores are announced.
More significantly, in many of these jurisdictions policy makers attend to the outcomes
(particularly the so-called league tables) and new governmental policies are enacted as a
result. Of course, the interest in education stems largely from an appreciation of the role of
human capital development in economic growth (Hanushek et al. 2008).
At the same time, education researchers have taken advantage of the treasure trove of
data to conduct sophisticated analyses: some focus on the relationships among student
performance, student background characteristics and school contexts; others look for
connections between student outcomes and classroom practices. More often than not, an
important goal is to identify those conditions that account for the success of the ‘‘high-
flyers,’’ those jurisdictions that top the charts.
To this ever-growing corpus, McKinsey and Company has contributed the present
report, a study of 25 jurisdictions selected on the basis of their performance on PISA 2003,
TIMSS or the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a bi-annual assess-
ment carried out in the United States. Most were either top scoring or displayed clear
improvement trajectories over a number of administrations. A few countries in the Middle
East and Latin America were included for comparison purposes, although they are not
much mentioned in the text. The authors conducted an extensive literature review and a
large number of interviews. In the end, they reached a rather unsurprising conclusion;
H. Braun (&)
Centre for the Study of Testing, Evaluation and Educational Policy (CSTEEP),
Boston College, Lynch School of Education, 140 Commonwealth Avenue,
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, USA
e-mail: henry.braun.1@bc.edu

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namely, that there are three keys to success: (i) making the teaching profession attractive to
high quality candidates and conducting a rigorous selection process for entry, (ii) pro-
moting effective and continuing professional development of teachers (and principals), and
(iii) targeting support for the academic needs for every child.
On commonsensical grounds, it would be hard to argue against the collective necessity
of these suggestions. The argument would be stronger, though, if the authors had been
more explicit about whether—and to what degree—all the high flyers indeed implemented
the three keys. It would also have been interesting to determine whether there were
jurisdictions that also pursued this approach but nonetheless did not meet with great
success. In fact, the report is written in a rather impressionistic style and it is difficult to get
a sense of how firm the evidential basis for the conclusions really is. The report contains
numerous presentations of by now familiar case studies (Finland, Hong Kong), as well as
less familiar ones (Alberta, Canada; Boston, United States.)
At the outset, the authors establish the fact that higher spending does not automatically
translate into meaningful gains. In particular, one graph shows that, in the United States,
increasingly greater investments over 35 years have been accompanied by essential level
results on the long-term trend component of NAEP. What is left unsaid is that a substantial
fraction of that increase has gone to fund new programs and mandates for English Lan-
guage learners and students with disabilities, among other things. While the dollars in the
graph have been inflation adjusted, the scores have not been ‘‘risk adjusted.’’ That said, it is
surely true that money is a necessary but not sufficient condition for success.
To their credit, the authors do discuss strategies for achieving each of the three
desiderata. For example, with respect to teacher quality, there must be a campaign to raise
the status of teaching, as well as to equalize teacher pay with that of professions requiring
comparable skills.1 Even with more qualified candidates being attracted to teaching, a
principled and multi-faceted process of selection should result in only a small fraction of
applicants eventually entering classrooms as newly minted teachers. They point out that, in
this country, examples of such a process can be found in Boston (Boston Teacher Resi-
dency Program) and in Chicago (Chicago Teaching Fellows), among other cities. The
difference is that in these cities only a small proportion of each new cohort of teachers
enters through such highly selective programs.
The focus of the report is firmly fixed on the instructional staff and what they do in the
classroom. But surely this cannot be the whole story. Students spend most of their lives
outside of school and they do not leave those lives at the school door. What they bring with
them—and what they do not—affects what transpires in school. Policy makers would be
well-advised to take a more ecological perspective on school improvement, one that takes
account of the collective strengths and deficits of the student population. Those children
who are highly mobile, or whose home language is not the language of instruction, or are
food insecure and lacking in proper medical and dental care pose considerable challenges
to even the best trained teachers. This is especially true when a significant proportion of a
school’s enrollment is exposed to multiple risk factors. Unfortunately, this is the case in too
many schools in too many countries, including my own.
Setting aside this concern for the moment, making significant progress with respect to
the three keys can be daunting enough, as there are many obstacles along the way. Policy
making is inextricably linked to politics. Thus, it is essential to have a general consensus

1
A forthcoming book, The Teaching Penalty: Teacher Pay Losing Ground by L. Mishel, S. Allegretto, and
S. Corcoran asserts that in the U.S.A. teacher total compensation is at least 12% lower than total com-
pensation in comparable professions.

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among the various stakeholder groups with respect to both strategy and means. Meaningful
change is only possible with leadership and commitment at all levels that ensures sustained
support, financial and otherwise, over a fairly long period of time. Certainly, how that
consensus is arrived at, the details of the ‘‘deal,’’ and the actual implementation will differ
from one jurisdiction to another. But leadership and ongoing commitment seem to be the
sine qua non for success.
Getting to consensus can be very difficult, given the legacy of past agreements, regional
agendas, mistrust among groups and principled disagreements about strategy. Sometimes,
in order to reach agreement, conditions are imposed that undermine the effort. For
example, if the deal includes imposition of an accountability system, then the design of the
system and the incentives it induces can work at cross-purposes with other elements of the
package. A simple illustration is provided by the No Child Left Behind Act. The use of a
technically flawed indicator of school outcomes discourages highly qualified teachers from
transferring to schools serving large numbers of disadvantaged students. Tragically, these
very students are the ones in greatest need of excellent teaching—and most likely to be
‘‘left behind.’’
The Boston Public School System appears repeatedly in the report. Indeed, under the
guidance of its long-serving (1995–2006) superintendent, Tom Payzant, it made great
strides in improving academic achievement with a student body of which more than three-
quarters were drawn from disadvantaged minority groups. Mr. Payzant instituted a
coherent improvement strategy, which was expanded and modified over time. He also
enjoyed the strong support of the mayor, the school committee, as well as the financial
support from the many foundations in the area. Thus, Boston benefited from an all-too-rare
occurrence in urban school systems: A long period of intelligent, sustained leadership. For
all that, much remains to be done. The absolute level of achievement still remains rela-
tively low. Moreover, recent results from main NAEP are mixed: from 2003 to 2007,
mathematics outcomes improved in both grades 4 and 8 but reading outcomes were nearly
flat. The good news in mathematics is offset by the fact that the corresponding achievement
gaps widened somewhat during this same period. The experiences of Boston and other
urban school systems should give pause to those looking for a quick fix. A thoughtful
review of the Payzant years in Boston can be found in a recent report.2
On the whole, international survey assessments like PISA and TIMSS have had a
positive influence on education policy. In their absence, national education systems would
remain ‘hermetically sealed’ with no easy way for policy makers or the public at large to
judge how they are performing in relation to systems in other countries. Although the
results of a single test yield an imperfect basis for comparison, they do contain much useful
information. Moreover, the auxiliary data collected concurrently, or subsequently (as is the
case with the present report), can be used to suggest alternative strategies for improving
education outcomes.
At the same time, policy makers ought to be wary of precipitous action. At the very least
they should: (i) ascertain whether the conditions for a long-term initiative are present; (ii)
evaluate different strategies not only with respect to their likelihood of increasing the
overall level of achievement but also reducing the gaps among different segments of the
population, however defined; (iii) examine the match between the assessment frameworks
employed by the surveys and their own; and (iv) Identify other indicators with which to
evaluate progress. A thoughtful and sustained effort, building upon a foundation that

2
Strong Foundation, Evolving Challenges. Prepared by the Aspen Institute Education and Society Program
and the Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University (March 2006).

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includes—but extends much beyond—the analyses and insights of the McKinsey report,
has a reasonable chance of achieving modest success. Unfortunately, the American
experience to date dissuades this reviewer from making more sanguine predictions.

Reference

Hanushek, E., Jamison, D., Jamison, E., & Woessman, L. (2008). Education and economic growth.
Education Next, 8(2), 62–70.

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