Non-equivalence in PISA’s ESCS index: No longer comparing apples with apples

This conference paper is derived from Anran Zhao's PhD dissertation, supervised by the two co-authors. It was presented at the 2024 ITC biennial conference in Granada, Spain.

We demonstrate that using the PISA ESCS to compare these 2 jurisdictions results in invalid non-equivalent measures of ESCS. Only 4 items had strict equivalence and when used in a propensity score matching revealed ludicrous positioning of Shanghai (the richest city in China) as equivalent to provincial town mid-socio-economic status schools in NZ. We conclude the ESCS is not a valid metric for comparing dissimilar jurisdicitons.