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China just began a major education reform effort that is aimed at reducing the importance of standardized testing in determining school quality and including factors such as student engagement, boredom, anxiety, and happiness. It also seeks to cut back on the amount of school work students are given. As scholar Yong Zhao notes in the following post, the approach is the opposite of the education reform path in the United States, which in recent years has increased the importance of test scores for accountability purposes.

Chinese documents explaining the reason for the reform are remarkable, noting that the obsession with test scores "severely hamper student development as a whole person, stunt their healthy growth, and limit opportunities to cultivate social responsibilities, creative spirit, and practical abilities in students."

Yong Zhao is the presidential chair and associate dean for global education at the University of Oregon's College of Education, where he also serves as the director of the Center for Advanced Technology in Education, and is a fellow of the International Academy for Education. This appeared on his blog.

By Yong Zhao

The Chinese Ministry of Education has just launched another major reform effort to reduce the importance of testing in education. In a document sent to all provincial education authorities on June 19 th, the Ministry of Education unveiled guidelines and a new framework for evaluating schools.

China has engaged in numerous systemic reforms over the last few decades, with the goal to minimize the impact of testing on teaching and learning. "However, due to internal and external factors, the tendency to evaluate education quality based simply on student test scores and school admissions rate has not been fundamentally changed," says the document. "These problems [of evaluation] severely hamper student development as a whole person, stunt their healthy growth, and limit opportunities to cultivate social responsibilities, creative spirit, and practical abilities in students."

To solve these problems, the Ministry of Education realizes that more serious reforms are needed to change how schools are evaluated.

Dubbed "green evaluation," the new evaluation framework attempt to end the use of test scores and success rates of sending students to higher-level schools as the only measure of education quality. Instead, it drastically broadens the scope of indicators. The framework includes five areas:

1. Moral Development indicated by Behaviors and Habits, Citizenship, Personality and Character, and Ambition and Beliefs.

2. Academic Development indicated by Knowledge and Skills, Discipline Thinking, Application Abilities, and Creativity.

3. Psychological and Physical Health indicated by Physical Fitness, Healthy Living Habits, Artistic and Aesthetic Taste, Emotional Health and Self-regulation, and Interpersonal Communication (social skills).

4. Development of Interest and Unique Talents indicated by Curiosity, Unique Talent and Skills, and Discovery and Development of Potentials.

5. Academic Burdens indicated by Amount of Study Time (e.g. class time, homework time, and time for sleep etc.), Quality of Instruction, Difficult Level of Classes, and Academic Pressure.

The overall idea is to reduce the importance of test scores and academic burden. It is quite interesting to see that schools are to be evaluated based on how much academic burden they put on students.

By the way, it is just the opposite of what the United States and some other Western countries are trying to do-the more burden (long school days, too much homework time, etc.) the school puts on students, the worse the school will be judged. Student engagement, boredom, anxiety, and happiness will also be used as measures of education quality.

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China's new education reform: Reducing importance of test scores

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China just began a major education reform effort that is aimed at reducing the importance of standardized testing in determining school quality and including factors such as student engagement, boredom, anxiety, and happiness. It also seeks to cut back on the amount of school work students are given.

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How technology is not being used effectively..

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How technology is not being used effectively..

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A report released by the Center for American Progress states that schools are not using technology in a way that benefits students. The United States is spending billions of dollars on technology in schools across the country, yet students are using the equipment for "lower-order skills" like practice and drill programs.

"Our findings suggest that many schools have yet to take full advantage of technology's ability to improve the art of teaching and the process of learning," said Ulrich Boser, author of the report and Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. "In classrooms across the nation, many students are not using technology in very sophisticated ways. Students are too often using computers to do drill and practice instead of more intellectually engaging activities such as using statistical programs or spreadsheets."

Boser analyzed data from National Assessment of Educational Progress student surveys from 2009 and 2011. He also ran a state-by-state survey of the state department of education websites in February of 2013 to see if they had conducted any evaluation of the return on their school technology investments.

He found that over a third of middle school math students use a computer for practice and drills on a regular basis. A mere 24% of middle school math students regularly use spreadsheets for their assignments and only 18% were in math classes that utilized statistical math programs on a regular basis.

Very few students reported using computers in science class to develop thinking skills or science skills, but 73% report routinely watching movies or videos in science class.

Boser acknowledges that technology holds the potential to help students with academic achievement, but he points out shortcomings that are currently stifling success. To start, he argues, states do not evaluate the outcomes they get for their technology spending, charging that currently states are only focused on the presence of the technology and not its return on investment.

Also, students from low-income or disadvantaged backgrounds have a lower chance of accessing technology-based learning. Boser points out that black students are 20% more likely than white students to use computers for drill and practice.

Boser makes three main recommendations based on his analysis. He advises that:

Policy makers need to do more to promote key learning goals, including giving teachers the proper resources and training they need to use technology successfully, and that schools must reward innovative uses of technology in the classroom;

Schools must ensure equal access to technology for students of all backgrounds;

Advocates need to evaluate to determine whether technology is producing a successful, positive outcome by conducting analysis about cost effectiveness.

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Report: Schools are Wasting Education Technology's Potential

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A report released by the Center for American Progress states that schools are not using technology in a way that benefits students.

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Private schools in Britain are increasingly dropping A-levels, the exams used to gauge student achievement, and are switching instead to the International A-Levels - the standards created for the foreign market which are less likely to be the target of tinkering by government officials. There's also a growing interest among private school students in Cambridge Pre-U, which is considered a more traditional assessment system used in British institutions before subject-level A-levels came into wider use.

Not willing to wait for the Coalition to complete its A-level overhaul, this year more than 350 schools are abandoning A-levels in favor of alternate exams. 188 are offering the International Baccalaureate diploma, 72 are entering students for the International A-levels and 99 are offering the Pre-U.

Among the schools that have turned away from the A-levels, the concerns seem to be not only the growing uncertainty as the process to make the exams more rigorous drags on, but also fear that the changes could be undone should Labour win in the next general election scheduled for May 7th, 2015.

But Ed Elliott, head of The Perse School, Cambridge, said many schools were unwilling to wait for the reforms or risk them being reversed by a future Labour administration.

The school offers the Pre-U in psychology, music, physics and chemistry and will move towards the International A-level in biology from September.

"The Perse does not want to be part of a game of political ping pong which will destabilise the exam system to the disadvantage of students," he said.

Elliott says that in the current political environment it only makes sense to sit out A-level exams in the near future until reform efforts shake out one way or another. Meanwhile, Perse students will have access to qualifications that are proven, rigorous, recognized internationally and don't have political infighting tainting them.

Cambridge International Examinations developed Pre-U as a more rigorous version of A-levels. CIE offers the exams in addition to the International A-levels which the organization has been running for more than 50 years.

The IB - championed by schools such as Sevenoaks, Wellington College and King Edward's, Birmingham - is a diploma qualification developed in Geneva and is designed to offer a more rounded experience for sixth-formers, with students taking a range of subjects, as well as completing an extended essay and doing community work. Latest figures from CIE show that 99 schools made entries for the Pre-U this year, up from 98 in 2012, and a further 150 are registered to teach it from September this year.

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Britain's Private Schools Dropping A-levels Due to Political Uncertainty

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Private schools in Britain are increasingly dropping A-levels, the exams used to gauge student achievement, and are switching instead to the International A-Levels - the standards created for the foreign market which are less likely to be the target of tinkering by government officials.