Our Arne Duncan was absolutely alarmed that the US scored about the middle. Amazingly those in Shanghai knew there was a price to pay for making education all about scores. A deputy principal of Peking University High School, and director of its International Division spoke out in a WSJ op ed about it.
Jiang Xueqin: The Test Chinese Schools Still FailWith its demanding parents, ambitious students, and test-obsessed culture, China's K-9 schooling is probably the most rigorous in the world. And Shanghai, an open and cosmopolitan city that is boundlessly ambitious and fiercely competitive, has always been China's K-9 education leader.
..."China's most promising students still must go abroad to develop their managerial drive and creativity, and there they have to unlearn the test-centric approach to knowledge that was drilled into them.
The failings of a rote-memorization system are well-known: lack of social and practical skills, absence of self-discipline and imagination, loss of curiosity and passion for learning. Chinese students burn themselves out testing into university, where many of them spend their time playing World of Warcraft.
But don't the PISA results at least show that China's K-9 education is the best in the world, and that standardized testing, as U.S. President Barack Obama seems to believe, is necessary to improve American schools? Not really. According to research on education, using tests to structure schooling is a mistake. Students lose their innate inquisitiveness and imagination, and become insecure and amoral in the pursuit of high scores.
Even Shanghai educators admit they're merely producing competent mediocrity.
Here is even more about how they are realizing the failings of the constant testing...even as our country's leaders have decided to take that route.
China's Confucian Culture Clash"Students hate it, parents rave against it, principals complain about it and even the Minister of Education is far from happy with it," says Xu, in his recent essay, Discourse of Resistance.
.."Hill, now the chief executive of the Australian Curriculum and Assessment Reporting Authority, which runs the My School website, says the Confucian "reverence for education" explains why Chinese and north-east Asian students do so well and also why many are so unhappy: they work very, very hard.
Gao Chunying says her son arrives at school at 7 am each day and gets home at 6.30 pm. He eats dinner for half an hour and then studies until 11 pm or midnight, six days a week. On Saturdays he stays at home and studies all day and all night.
''Every student in China studies like this," Gao says.
"They carry such a great burden, it is not good for their personality. I prefer Western education because they respect children and let them have their own ideas."
Unfortunately not for long here. We are heading the way that China is seeing now as too intense. We should learn from their experience.
Michigan State's Yong Chao wrote about this testing phenomenom as well.
How Shanghai topped PISA rankingHe wrote a piece on his blog reacting to the great surprise expressed by American leaders, including Education Secretary Arne Duncan, about the fast rise of the Shanghi students in the 2009 administration of the Program for International Student Assessment. The test is given to 15-year-olds in about 64 countries and individual school systems. Results released last week by the test’s sponsor, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, showed that the United States was generally in the middle of the pack.
On his blog, Yong wrote, in part:
I don’t know why this is such a big surprise to these well educated and smart people. Why should anyone be stunned? It is no news that the Chinese education system is excellent in preparing outstanding test takers, just like other education systems within the Confucian cultural circle — Singapore, Korea, Japan, and Hong Kong.
Interestingly, this has not become big news in China, a country that loves to celebrate its international achievement. I had thought for sure China’s major media outlets would be all over the story. But to my surprise, I have not found the story covered in big newspapers or other mainstream media outlets. I have been diligently reading xinhuanet.com, the official web portal for Xinhua News Agency, China’s state-controlled media organization, but have yet found the story on the front page or on its education columns.
Professor Chao then refers to the letter written by a mother about the stress her daughter has experienced under this testing regime. The link to the letter is in Chinese, so I will refer to Chao's website.
A True Wake-up Call for Arne Duncan: The Real Reason Behind Chinese Students Top PISA PerformanceThe story, entitled A Helpless Mother Complains about Extra Classes Online, Students Say They Have Become Stupid Before Graduation, follows a mother’s online posting complaining about how her child’s school’s excessive academic load have caused serious physical and psychological damages:
Since my daughter began 7th grade (first year of middle school), she has had extra evening classes. At that time, the class ends at 18:50 and I accepted it. But ever since she entered 9th grade, the evening class has lengthened to 20:40. For the graduating class, the students have to take classes from 7:30 to 20:00 on Saturdays. There are also five weeks of classes during the winter and summer school vacation. All day long, the students don’t have any self-study time, or physical education classes…
This kind of practice has seriously damaged students’ health. They have completely lost motivation and interest in studying. My child’s health gets worse day by day. So is her mental spirit. She has begun to lose her.
This is not the end. After coming home after 10pm, she has to spend at least one hour on her homework. She has to get up at 5am. She is still a child. May I ask how many adults can endure this kind of work?
Yong Chao expressed more concern earlier about this intense testing.
Asian countries moving away from standardized testing because it kills "creativity and innovation"Just as the federal government has announced the awarding of $330 million to two consortiums so that they can develop new national exams, it is more important than ever that people check out this video of one of our best critics of high stakes testing, Yong Zhao.
..."He points out that China and other Asian countries are trying to move away from standardized testing, because it kills creativity and innovation, just as the US government is trying to impose it on schools throughout the country.
His blog also has more about Duncan's inability to process this information.
Zhao asks how in the world could Arne travel the country on that big blue bus and not hear any criticism.
During this one-hour call-in radio program, Duncan took questions from students and teachers in the Washington DC area in the studio and a few callers from around the country. Out of all the questions asked, only one gets close to criticism: “When are we going to start learning how to think and not just how to pass a standardized test?” To which Duncan answered: “It got to happen yesterday.”
That’s the moment of epiphany: Secretary Arne Duncan is a master and all criticism melts away before this great master, master of myth because all critics are told what they want to hear.
One more paragraph from the article by Jiang Xueqin.
Both multinationals and Chinese companies have the same complaints about China's university graduates: They cannot work independently, lack the social skills to work in a team and are too arrogant to learn new skills. In 2005, the consulting firm McKinsey released a report saying that China's current education system will hinder its economic development.
That was 5 years ago, yet our Secretary of Education is not paying attention.
That is scary.
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