The cost is paid by students, teachers, and the public that funds the system without being able to know how it works. PISA is applied every three years. Panama should follow the same path: use the return to PISA not only to measure itself, but to systematically study these success cases, compare policies, and emulate what works. Panama has participated intermittently since 2009, skipping the 2012 and 2025 cycles. Panama also did not participate in the 2012 cycle. Therefore, participation in PISA cannot continue to be a decision that each administration makes or undoes at its discretion. Peru did the same: it has had two decades of uninterrupted participation, comparing its evolution cycle by cycle. This cyclicity is not arbitrary. Welcome back. Panama loses what it needs most: evidence. Panama did not participate in the 2025 cycle, the results of which the world will compare in the coming years. When it becomes a discretionary variable, the cost is not paid by the government that decides to withdraw. It cannot demonstrate whether it improved, to what extent, or thanks to which policies. In education, blank pages have consequences that go far beyond one government or one administration. The 2025 withdrawal was not the first. When a country returns after an absence, it does not resume the series: it starts almost from scratch. Poland started with poor results. No alternative assessment can replace what PISA offers: an external, standardized, and comparable look at the world. The countries that have advanced the most are not those that get the best scores. It is the fundamental right of a citizenship that funds the system and deserves to know how it works. Panamanian students cannot continue to pay the price of our intermittency. He analyzed the systems that were better than his; identified concrete gaps; and designed a sustained curriculum reform that allowed it to scale up to be among the best in Europe. PISA should be the continuous mirror of the reform, not its graduation ceremony. Returning in 2029 only makes sense if it is accompanied by an institutional framework that makes that decision irreversible. Today it is recognized by the OECD as one of the few developing countries with a consistent upward trajectory. It must be enshrined as a permanent institutional commitment. On March 28, 2026, the Ministry of Education announced that Panama will return to PISA in 2029. The central argument that justified the most recent decision was the necessary resources versus investing in the curriculum transformations underway. The missing data create an analytical void that no alternative test can fill retroactively. Now it has to be shielded. Transparency in education is not an option. It was also ensured that the ERCE test (Regional Comparative and Evaluative Study) by UNESCO was more suitable for diagnosing the failures of the Panamanian system. Two absences that are not anecdotes. It requires that the results—be they good or bad—be published, analyzed, and used to design policies. It also deserves to be analyzed objectively: the welcome rectification comes after having paid the price of the absence. As long as that participation depends on the available budget or the conviction of an official, the pattern will repeat. It is a blank page. Instead of moving away from the mirror, he used it. It should be a state policy, institutionally shielded as other obligations with international organizations are. A country's participation in PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) should not depend on a budgetary decision or the criterion of an administration. They are the ones who never stopped measuring and learned from those who did it better. The solution is not just to announce the return: it is to institutionally guarantee that there will be no more exits. The decision to return is correct, but it reveals a paradox. Skipping a cycle is not equivalent to losing a photograph. If the system needs to be prepared before being evaluated, the evaluation stops being part of the improvement process and becomes its showcase. It is equivalent to breaking the film. The news deserves to be celebrated. It allows for the construction of comparable historical series. They are a pattern.
