The Metric Trap: How Quebec’s Soaring Graduation Rate Hides Stagnant PISA Scores

Quebec’s education system appears to be a resounding success story. Since the province launched its sweeping education policy in 2017, spending has surged by 55 percent, and the proportion of students graduating or qualifying from high school has climbed from 71.9 percent in 2008–2009 to a peak of 84.1 percent in 2021–2022, settling at 82.4 percent in 2023–2024. Pass rates on mandatory ministerial examinations in mathematics and science have generally trended upward as well. Yet beneath this glossy surface lies a troubling contradiction: over the same period, Quebec’s scores on the Programme for International Student Assessment, or PISA, have stagnated or declined across mathematics, science, and reading. A new perspective article published in Frontiers in Behavioral Economics argues that this divergence is not a statistical accident but a textbook illustration of how cognitive biases and a single dominant performance metric can create an illusion of progress while the underlying competencies remain unchanged or even erode.

The analysis, conducted by David Santarossa of the Education Department at Université TÉLUQ in Montréal, draws on two powerful concepts from cognitive science and social theory. The first is Campbell’s Law, formulated by psychologist Donald Campbell in 1979, which states that the more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it becomes to corruption pressures and the more apt it is to distort the very social processes it was intended to monitor. The second is a pair of well-documented cognitive biases: the availability heuristic, which leads decision-makers to judge performance based on information that comes most readily to mind, and attribute substitution, which causes them to replace a difficult question with a simpler, more measurable proxy. Together, these mechanisms help explain why a rising graduation rate can coexist with flat or falling scores on an independent international assessment.

The story begins with the Politique de la réussite éducative, launched in 2017, which set an ambitious target of 90 percent graduation or qualification by 2030. From that moment, the graduation rate became the central Key Performance Indicator of Quebec’s education policy, dominating government communications, budget speeches, and media coverage. Financial investment served as the preferred lever: between 2018–2019 and 2024–2025, education spending rose by 55 percent, placing Quebec at the top of Canadian provinces for per-student expenditure in constant dollars. The results on the official indicator were impressive, with the rate climbing steadily from its 2008–2009 baseline of 71.9 percent. But when Santarossa turned to PISA, an externally administered assessment of 15-year-old students in more than 80 countries, the picture changed dramatically.

Quebec’s PISA scores tell a starkly different story from the graduation statistics. In mathematics, scores fell from 543 points in 2009 to 514 in 2022. Science showed a statistically significant decline, dropping from 524 to 512 over the same period. Reading followed a similar downward trajectory, from 522 in 2009 to 501 in 2022, despite a brief peak at 532 in 2015. Because Quebec still ranks well above the OECD average in all three domains, media outlets and government officials have generally celebrated the province’s strong relative position. But Santarossa argues that this favorable cross-national comparison masks a critical temporal signal: when compared against its own past performance, Quebec is regressing, not advancing. This contradictory indicator tempers the optimistic image conveyed by the rising graduation rate and improving pass rates on ministerial examinations.

The article identifies several rational institutional adaptations that are consistent with the incentive structure created by elevating the graduation rate to a dominant KPI. One of the most striking is the rapid expansion of students formally designated as having handicaps or learning difficulties, known in Quebec by the acronym EHDAA. At the turn of the 2000s, roughly one in ten students carried this designation; today the proportion has reached one in five province-wide and one in three at the secondary level. Each EHDAA student must have an individualized intervention plan that may include adaptations to assessment conditions, such as additional time or the use of assistive technologies. While the rise in designations may reflect legitimate factors including greater awareness of learning difficulties, expanded diagnostic practices, and inclusive policy orientations, its timing and direction align closely with the incentives created by the graduation-rate target.

The role of assistive technologies deserves particular scrutiny. Among the most common accommodation measures are spell and grammar-checkers and word predictors, which are increasingly permitted during assessments, including mandatory ministerial examinations required for diploma attainment. Longitudinal research shows that these tools significantly reduce spelling and grammar errors without improving overall writing competencies such as coherence, vocabulary, and narrative quality. A quasi-experimental Quebec study of 314 adolescents confirmed that gains are limited to lexical and grammatical spelling, with no effect on other dimensions of writing competency. In other words, these technologies function more as compensation than as a catalyst for deep learning, optimizing the surface indicator of passing an examination while potentially leaving intact the very cognitive gap the assessment was meant to measure. Critic Claude Boyer has characterized this shift in Quebec orthopedagogy as a transition from remedial intervention, which aims to close performance gaps, to what he calls relief intervention, which merely alleviates difficulties through accommodations without genuinely correcting underlying deficiencies.

Teaching to the test represents another mechanism consistent with Campbell’s Law. Students and teachers invest considerable effort in maximizing results on mandatory certification examinations, often through intensive preparation focused on memorization of standard formulas, learning of standardized writing structures, and repeated exam simulations. This phenomenon has been frequently documented in the Canadian and Quebec educational literature, although its precise prevalence and long-term effects remain subjects of ongoing empirical debate. From the perspective of policymakers, both the increase in EHDAA designations and the expanded use of assessment accommodations appear as inclusive solutions that simultaneously address equity and achievement objectives. But Santarossa argues that these developments may contribute, at the system level, to a loosening of the relationship between certification outcomes and the cognitive competencies measured by PISA, even if the available data do not allow a precise quantification of this mechanism relative to other factors.

The article is careful to acknowledge alternative explanations for the observed divergence. The COVID-19 pandemic caused major learning disruptions between 2020 and 2022, and PISA 2022 captured a cohort directly affected by school closures, whereas graduation rates reflect cohorts that experienced varying degrees of disruption and, in some cases, adjusted certification requirements. Demographic and socioeconomic changes, variations in PISA sampling frames, and student effort on a low-stakes assessment could also influence results. Curricular reforms, the expansion of vocational and alternative qualification pathways, and modifications to the rules governing access to the Quebec diploma may have facilitated higher certification rates without producing equivalent gains in applied cognitive skills. A comprehensive assessment of the relative contribution of these factors would require longitudinal microdata linking individual student trajectories, EHDAA status, accommodations received, and cognitive outcomes, data that are not currently publicly available in Quebec.

Beyond the cognitive biases that lead decision-makers to privilege easily measurable indicators, Santarossa raises a second and complementary problem: even if the graduation rate were a perfectly valid measure of system performance, the economics of education literature suggests it would still constitute a relatively weak proxy for the cognitive competencies that ultimately matter for individuals and society. Numerous studies conclude that there is no strong and consistent relationship between school resources and student performance once other factors are controlled for. Research by Eric Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann confirms that cognitive skills of the population, rather than mere school attainment, are powerfully related to individual earnings, income distribution, and economic growth. In short, a rising graduation rate and increased education budgets do not constitute reliable indicators of genuine cognitive development.

The Quebec case offers a cautionary tale for policymakers everywhere who rely on single headline metrics to navigate complex systems. The persistent divergence between the rising graduation rate and falling PISA scores has not yet triggered a formal governmental review, in part because Quebec continues to rank among the top performers in the OECD. Yet Santarossa argues that this situation highlights the urgent need for more robust decision-making protocols that integrate independent external benchmarks, aligning institutional incentives with genuine competency development rather than its statistical appearance. The recent creation of the Institut national d’excellence en éducation in 2025, whose mandate includes the promotion of evidence-based practices, may represent an important complementary mechanism. Effective governance in complex educational systems, the article concludes, is more likely to be achieved through balanced indicator frameworks that combine administrative outcome measures with independent external assessments, directing attention toward practices shown to enhance deep learning rather than solely toward easily measurable certification targets.

Subject of Research: How Campbell's Law and cognitive biases explain the divergence between Quebec's rising graduation rate and stagnant PISA scores

Article Title: Availability bias and Campbell's Law: why Quebec's rising graduation rate masks stagnant PISA scores

Article References: Santarossa, D. (2026). Availability bias and Campbell's Law: why Quebec's rising graduation rate masks stagnant PISA scores. Frontiers in Behavioral Economics, 5, Article 1903687. https://doi.org/10.3389/frbhe.2026.1903687

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/frbhe.2026.1903687

Keywords: Campbell's Law, availability bias, attribute substitution, PISA, graduation rate, Quebec education policy, performance indicators, assistive technologies, teaching to the test, behavioral economics, education spending, cognitive competencies