A few months ago, I compared college anxiety in the hyper-competitive private school world here in New York City with the college anxiety I saw when I taught in China. If elite parents in New York think they have it bad when they drop $50,000 each year in the hope of threading their child through the Ivy League needle, they should count their blessings; Chinese parents can only sit and pray as their sons and daughters spend these two days (June 6-7) sitting for the gaokao, an SAT on steroids on which their entire future depends. College admissions in China are based solely on this test, and academically motivated Chinese teenagers spend 8-10 hours a day for four years in preparation. High School in China has one purpose: test prep. There is no curriculum outside of the test (which tests math, English, Chinese, as well as a chosen subject like chemistry or political correctness). There is no life outside of the test. It is a high stakes, No Child Left Behind dream.
Seniors at Saint Ann's where I teach -- a school that does not grade or rank, and instead offers narrative, holistic reflection of each individual student -- are in educational nirvana compared to their Chinese counterparts. Our kids take the SAT, but other than this moment of cookie-cutter standardization, they pursue life in all its varieties. Kids who have been at Saint Ann's since pre-school have never received a grade. It is the anti-China.
Are our kids falling behind? Are we coddling them? Are they failing to compete? America's top colleges don't think so: the Wall Street Journal ranks Saint Ann's in the top twenty schools in the country at getting kids into elite universities.
Most schools are not like Saint Ann's, and perhaps they shouldn't be. But it is depressing to me to see our school system moving towards more testing and a more gaokao-like standardization. Even the gaokao's biggest defenders, including the eloquent Jiang Xueqin, a deputy principle at elite Peking University High School, admit that the test "robs Chinese students of their curiosity, creativity, and childhood." (His provocative essay -- linked above -- nevertheless concludes that "the gaokao, for better or worse, is the fairest and most humane way to distribute China's scarce education resources.") Others point out that while Chinese do well on standardized tests, they are not being taught to compete in an innovation economy. They are, in fact, damaged by their system.
Yet this is the very system Arne Duncan and Barack Obama seem to want to emulate with their so-called "Race to the Top." They are bribing our wildly underfunded schools with dollars tied explicitly to gaokao-like tests.
If teaching in China taught me anything, it taught me to be very skeptical of high stakes testing. It distorts curricula, makes teaching a chore, and favors the rich. Wealthy students in China pay exorbitant fees to cram schools to help them edge out peers who can't afford extra help. Poor students simply feel hopeless. Ennui and depression are epidemic, as is cheating (this year, it's gone particularly high tech). The uber-elite are simply opting out of the system entirely, doing all they can to send their kids abroad, thereby avoiding the gaokao. At the extreme, this includes buying an EB-5 Visa (for $500,000, with a few strings attached) and paying Americans to write their children's entrance essays. I've been offered thousands of dollars to write essays in the name of Beijing pre-teens. The parents are desperate to rescue their kids from a system that stymies creativity and makes education a burden.
Tests are not going to make our schools better. There's only one thing that will: money. We simply underfund public education. New York spends more educating each of its children than any other state, about $14,000 per year. By comparison, St. Paul's -- a boarding school in New England where I taught last year, and that offers as spectacular and transformative an education as is possible -- spends more than $60,000 per student per year.
The rich in this country know what it takes to have an outstanding education, and it ain't a bubble test.
Follow Michael Levy on Twitter: www.twitter.com/kosherchinese
Randi Weingarten: Are We Testing Too Much?
Most commentators here have a very skewered vision of China as a monolithic, oppressive, totalitarian dictatorship. In fact it is a hyper-evolving pluralistic society that is rushing headlong into the future.
The two articles illustrate the fact that China has one foot in the past and another foot in the future. Nevertheless it is striding forwards. We on the other hand seem be be sliding backwards.
The other point is that no two people come away from China with the same impression, China is not a monochrome society. It is variegated and kaleidoscopic in nature. Once people realize that, they may be better able to understand that China is one of the most dynamic, constantly changing places in today's world. And I say that because no other country has changed as much economically, socially and yes politically over the last 30 than China.
http://www.good.is/post/do-we-need-to-ditch-high-stakes-testing-to-compete-with-china/?utm_content=headline&utm_medium=hp_carousel&utm_source=slide_3
Article is here in the education sec. of HP.
Step 1: There is a problem with education.
Step 21: We need to reform education!
What happened to Steps 2-20, where you identify what is wrong and see how existing resources are being utilized before proposing solutions?
Throwing money at an ill-defined problem will never solve it. In fact, it opens the doors to thieves and testing thugs. Just take a look at Iraq and Afghanistan...what a waste.
"New York spends more educating each of its children than any other state, about $14,000 per year. By comparison, St. Paul's -- a boarding school in New England where I taught last year, and that offers as spectacular and transformative an education as is possible -- spends more than $60,000 per student per year."
My kids are in private school and $60,000 per kid per year is about what I pay, not to mention the fundraisers. which bring in total, probably in the hundreds of thousands per year to the school. It's expensive.
I think when implementing steps 2-20, we would find that ultimately, a lot of the problem is the lack of $.
If I had the time, I'd write a series of manuscripts on how all this works, starting from the classroom level all the way up to the education secretary level.
Thank You for revealing the truth of china's educational system.
I'm sick to death hearing about China's great test scores compared to the USA. It's good to have one's suspicions confirmed. Massive testing regimes which require teaching to the test (sadly more and more in the USA under our hapless leadership) destroys creativity.
Overall I would say China's system is superior because it actually allows lower income students to get into Elite Universities and there is a clear set of guidelines on who gets in and who doesn't.
In comparison USA private elite seem to have unclear guidelines on who gets in and who gets left out, the only thing the universities have to focus on is fulfilling race quotas and commonly give spots to big donators.
If I had the choice to choose an education system to participate in, I would choose China's always because the impoverished child has just as good a shot as any wealthy child. Sure you may bring up elite cram schools, but ordinary cram schools are just as good. All cram schools teach the same thing, and everybody can afford a cram school because the start up costs are so low all you need is a teacher and a chalkboard.
In comparison a poor student in the USA, even if they get terrific scores and spends their time working at Mcdonalds, will not be able to compete with the student who gets mediocre grades but daddy was able to pull strings and pad his transcript with activities like rowing, horse back riding, french lessons, spent his summers working with his uncle who is an expert on nuclear fusion etc...
A good piece, highlighting issues needing attention. However, we private school folks should be more forthcoming about our privileges. While St. Ann's doesn't grade students, the Wall Street Journal rankings and college placement statistics are both consequences, in large part, of the privilege of selecting only those students who are most likely to succeed in these ways. The absence of grades and bubbles doesn't have a causal relationship with the success you cite. That success comes primarily from the self-fulfilling prophecy of selection.
I don't mean to be critical (or hypocritical!) The basic point of your piece is sound and I continue to admire that St. Ann's, like Calhoun, dares to defy toxic conventional wisdom.
I strongly recommend reading, "Catching up or Leading the Way" by Yong Zhao who talks about much of what you are highlighting here.