French students’ demonstrations are on the front pages now. But the real story isn’t being reported. It’s about funding – and much more. To understand what’s happening in education globally – including the US – we need to look at who’s in control of what’s learned, taught, and funded. The national and international can’t be separated.

TESTING, TESTING, TESTING

Increasingly, US education is being blasted by politicians, seemingly non-partisan groups, and on social media because schools and teachers have failed to educate our kids. Their evidence? Declining scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, (NAEP), better known as the “nation’s report card.”

NAEP is the US version of international tests of student achievement developed by the OECD, (the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development), an international economic organization of governments. Although news reports don’t explain this, our “national report card” for educational achievement, aligns for the most part with the OECD’s test, PISA, (Program for International Student Assessment) in math and literacy. (AI is coming soon.) Why only literacy and math? Why not literature, art, sciences, and social studies? Because according to the OECD, reading and math are the most important skills workers need to compete in the global economy, and the purpose of education is preparing workers for the labor market.

Though educational systems differ greatly globally, solutions to increase academic achievement increasingly look the same: Privatize, use tech, and more closely align what is taught with the tests.

However, in France’s upcoming elections for president, one major candidates, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who heads a movement/party called La France Insoumise (France Unbowed), is rejecting not only the responsibility of schools (and teachers) for the decline, he’s contesting the rationale for the tests. [i] France has a national funded education system, whereas the US Constitution makes education a responsibility of the states. Still, Mélenchon’s statement about testing, education’s purposes, and its funding, are worth considering as we in the US face the same orchestrated outrage over decline in test scores.

Here is Mélenchon’s statement with our comments about how it relates testing in the US.

Since the publication of the new results from the OECD’s survey on student performance on the so-called “PISA” test, the right wing has been issuing an increasing number of reactions that are as alarmist as they are hypocritical.

First, I would like to point out that the PISA rankings are not compatible with the French republican vision of education. Developed by an organization dedicated to measuring economic performance—which is itself assessed according to questionable standards—it primarily evaluates the ability of education systems to produce the workforce that the market needs. But it fails to take into account other key dimensions of education, such as training in critical thinking, analysis, and cultural openness. Moreover, the overall decline in test scores should be interpreted as the failure of a comprehensive policy of commodifying education, a policy that the test itself has helped to advance.

But above all, it is laughable to see Emmanuel Macron’s [note: Macron was the former President of France, unable to run for a third term] former ministers of education, budget, and prime ministers shedding tears over the decline in French school performance. For this decline proves one thing: the budget cuts in education that they decided upon are having serious consequences.

Let’s review the record of “Macronism” for French schools:

• Class sizes are larger than the European Union average

• Two out of three schools began the 2026 school year with an incomplete teaching staff

• One out of every ten class hours is lost for students because there aren’t enough substitute teachers in France

• French teachers are the lowest-paid in Europe and lack quality professional training.

Starting in the 2027 school year, we must reverse this trend—not to climb the PISA rankings, but because our youth are our greatest asset. There will therefore be a significant increase in education spending to grant permanent status to temporary staff in the national education system, recruit teachers and raise their salaries, establish university-level schools for education professions with early recruitment of future teachers, provide free school meals and supplies, and renovate school facilities.

Translated with DeepL.com (free version). Translation reviewed by Chloe Asselin.

Lois:

Mélenchon’s statement speaks to the flood of publicity over declining test scores, which will greatly increase after the midterm elections. He identifies the origins of the tests in the OECD’s demand to make education train workers for the global economy, and he questions that purpose. In contrast, both the Democrats and Republicans, and Bernie Sanders too, embrace making education serve the economy.

Mélenchon argues for France’s right to have education carry out the nation’s political values, not those of the OECD. And he argues the focus on training workers for the labor market marginalizes other essential purposes of education, including “critical thinking, analysis, and cultural openness.” He fuses opposition to the far Right’s ideological campaign (of nativism, racism, patriarchy, cultural hegemony) with support for greatly increased funding for all the schools in France.

Compare Mélenchon’s vision with what we hear in the US. Democrats are all-in for making tests (and more tech) the basis of identifying and rectifying racial disparities in education, and some of the big money in tech, which went to Trump and the GOP in November 2024, now supports keeping the tests and intensifying “privatization with datafication” with AI. Even our national unions long ago surrendered even the pretense of wanting to limit use of standardized testing to measure student learning.

One officer of a local known for its defense of social justice told me the union was being beaten down for its declining test scores and wondered how to address this. The answer is in Mélenchon’s statement, supported by research and analysis done about the testing before it became embedded in the schools – and accepted as inevitable. We know if we raise spending from “awful” to “not so bad,” and the money goes for schools teach to the test, as Mississippi has done in its well-publicized “miracle,” we can probably raise test scores and diminish (some) racial disparities – in the early years, though even that accomplishment is questionable, as this solid research shows.

As do we in the US, France deserves an education system decided by those most affected – not corporations or politicians acting on behalf of big money. As do we in the US, France needs a massive increase in funding for its schools. Although US states and local districts nominally control education, in fact, since standardized testing based on the OECD vision for our future was imposed on us, we have a de facto national curriculum – without national funding.

The new neoliberal project in education, which we will like see in full force after the midterm elections, may overturn some of Trump’s funding cuts, but any increased funding, which will likely be temporary, will come at the price of schools being even more privatized, money siphoned off for contracts to tech companies and AI, and further control of curriculum.

Mélenchon’s statement puts us back on track in terms of what we demand from politicians who want our support. And the national strike of public employee unions on September 29, 2026, including a significant contingent of primary school teachers, shows what we should demand of AFT and NEA.

Chloe:

While I did support and vote for the New Popular Front in French elections, Mélenchon is problematic. He is a politician of the French state that defends French workers but doesn’t fully question French capitalism and the legacy of French colonialism. I agree with his statements about the terrible effects of Macron’s budget cuts on French education and the limits of the PISA tests, but I believe the most important focus and voices right now are the students, teachers, and public sector workers currently out in the streets all over France protesting the Macronism of French schools. They are demanding the same things Mélenchon is but it’s coming from a mass uprising which I find more powerful than from a politician. They are going beyond Melanchon’s statement and questioning the French state (not only Macron) that has ignored French young people for too long.

As a teacher, I find it powerful that the high schoolers are literally saying that student learning conditions are teacher working conditions which is amazing coming from students rather than teachers. The education systems around the world can only be improved when students, teachers, families, and community members come together to make their own demands rather than allow governments to make decisions for them.

[i] More about Mélenchon and La France Insoumise, the party and candidate.