Evaluating Progress Toward an Equal Opportunity Goal: Assessing the German Educational Reforms of the First Decade of the 21st Century

The first Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) results on language literacy administered in Germany in 2000 shocked the nation bringing about some fundamental reforms in the education system. A e4 billion plan to reform the schooling system involved intensified parent and teacher training, increases in the number of schooling hours and changes in the way student performance was evaluated. By way of measuring the extent of the improvements, this paper proposes and implements new techniques for evaluating the effectiveness of the reforms in the context of a social justice imperative when outcomes before and after their introduction are not cardinally comparable. Fundamental changes in the structure of the dependency of child outcomes on circumstances were detected with some qualified improvements in equality of opportunity over the period.