Singapore has decided to eliminate grades. No more standardized testing for young children.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-39142030
Singapore has decided that values and character must be emphasized, not test-taking skills.
The BBC reports:
“Singapore is in top place in the international rankings for education. But it wants the next upgrade of its school system to focus on keeping students positive and resilient.
“Dr Lim Lai Cheng, former head of the prestigious Raffles Institution school in Singapore and director at the Singapore Management University, explains the push for character as well as qualifications.
“It was no accident that Singapore created one of the world’s highest performing education systems in five decades.
“Reminiscent of the examinations for selecting mandarins in old China, the road to success in Singapore has always been focused on academic credentials, based on merit and allowing equal access for all.
“This centralised system helped Singapore to create social cohesion, a unity of purpose among its schools and an ethos of hard work that many nations envy.
“But the purpose of the education system has changed and Singapore in 2017 is no longer the fledgling state it was in 1965.
“Schools have become highly stratified and competitive. More advantaged families are better able to support their children with extra lessons outside of school, such as enrichment classes in mathematics, English, dance and music.
“Those who can’t afford this have to depend on their children’s own motivation and the resources of the school to catch up.
“Dr Lim Lai Cheng says the school system needs to encourage well-being
“This social divide continues to widen because the policies that had won the system its accolades – based on the principle of meritocracy – no longer support the social mobility they were meant to bring about.
So work is in progress to tackle anything in the system that seems to be working against social cohesion.
“This time around, it will no longer be enough to develop a highly-skilled workforce to plug into the global economy.
“The next update of the education system will have to ensure that Singapore can create a more equitable society, build a stronger social compact among its people while at the same time develop capabilities for the new digital economy.
“Government policies are moving away from parents and students’ unhealthy obsession with grades and entry to top schools and want to put more emphasis on the importance of values.
Schools have been encouraged, especially for the early elementary years, to scrap standardised examinations and focus on the development of the whole child.”
Interestingly, the Singapore school
Authorities were influenced by the work of Dr. Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Well, perhaps from the frying pan into the fire go the children of Singapore. The last sentence warns of the continued heat, courtesy of the influence of Martin Seligman. The article suggests a transition from competitive academics to the development of values.
Seligman, along with the grit team of Tough and Duckworth, has been the inspiration behind the “no excuses” approach to values and character development. This results in shunning, shaming, suspending, expelling and otherwise humiliating poor children of color. Abandoning standardized assessments and nutty competition is a good thing. Emulating the worst characteristics of America’s charter schools is not.
Let’s hope not. Because Singapore can be ‘strikingly’ strict.
Let’s hope they follow the true ideology of equitability, not the fake civil rights crap of our deformers, may they go defunct in one of Duane Swackers’ levels of hell.
The devil told me about that new level. He sure seemed quite proud of it. He didn’t seem too sad over his recent defeat* at the hands of Mr. J. McEuen. He was quite emphatic, though, in insisting that it is not only for unrepentant edudeformers but also GAGA* teachers and adminimals.
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6RUg-NkjY4
**Going Along to Get Along (GAGA): Nefarious practice of most educators who implement the edudeformers agenda even though the educators know that those educational malpractices will cause harm to the students and defile the teaching and learning process. The members of the GAGA gang are destined to be greeted by the Karmic Gods of Retribution*** upon their passing from this realm.
***Karmic Gods of Retribution: Those ethereal beings specifically evolved to construct the 21st level in Dante’s Hell. The 21st level signifies the combination of the 4th (greed), 8th (fraud) and 9th (treachery) levels into one mega level reserved especially for the edudeformers and those, who, knowing the negative consequences of the edudeformers agenda, willing implemented it so as to go along to get along. The Karmic Gods of Retribution also personally escort these poor souls, upon their physical death, to the 21st level unless they enlighten themselves, a la one D. Ravitch, to the evil and harm they have caused so many innocent children, and repent and fight against their former fellow deformers. There the edudeformers and GAGAers will lie down on a floor of smashed and broken ipads and ebooks curled in a fetal position alternately sucking their thumbs to the bones while listening to two words-Educational Excellence-repeated without pause for eternity.
Steve Nelson,
Thanks for the heads up about Seligman. Those methods of control are just right for an authoritarian society.
I am inclined to agree with Steve Nelson that a change in Singapore’s policy on test-centric education is likely to introduce different tests. One example is the reference to “Character scorecards” and “reflection journals,” now “the staple in many primary schools, to allow parents to follow the social and developmental progress of their children.”
The Seligman website offers twenty tests of wellbeing. “Emotional wellbeing” (five tests), “Engagement” (eight tests), including one for 24 character traits in children, also separate tests for grit and self-control, optimism, forgiveness, gratitude (among others). There are two tests for “Flourishing,” and three tests for “Meaning”—meaningfulness of life, compassion, and attachment. https://www.authentichappiness.sas.upenn.edu/testcenter
In addition to these online tests, Seligman is the Executive director of the Imagination Institute where predictive tests of creativity are being pursued, aided by brain imaging studies and sorting out issues bearing on “normal” and creative activity. http://imagination-institute.org/who-we-are
Then there are/were the school climate surveys developed for ESSA compliance. There are hundreds of items for students, parents, educators, and non-instructional personnel. The survey contract, with American Institutes for Research, has expired but you can find still find the survey questions at that website or through the link below. The survey questions are/were intended to measure three broad domains of school climate, each presumed to bear on student wellbeing.
1. Engagement—Cultural and linguistic competence, Relationships, School participation.
2. Safety—Emotional Safety, Physical Safety, Substance Abuse, and Emergency Readiness/management.
3. Environment—Physical environment, Instructional environment, Physical health, Mental health, Discipline. https://safesupportivelearning.ed.gov/edscls
Then there is the other question—elephant in the room. Will the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OCED) alter its tests and the rating system that has made Singapore look so good? How will Singapore manage the potential loss of status as number one on tests administered by the OCED’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)?
In 2014, about 80 citizens (including Diane Ravitch) sent a letter to Dr. Andreas Schleicher, head of OECD testing in an effort to put the brakes on the distortion of education created by the OECD regime of testing and ranking nations by their PISA scores. Here are just a few points in the letter
“By emphasizing a narrow range of measurable aspects of education, PISA takes attention away from the less measurable or immeasurable educational objectives like physical, moral, civic and artistic development, thereby dangerously narrowing our collective imagination regarding what education is and ought to be about.”
”As an organisation of economic development, OECD is naturally biased in favour of the economic role of public [state] schools. But preparing young men and women for gainful employment is not the only, and not even the main goal of public education, which has to prepare students for participation in democratic self-government, moral action and a life of personal development, growth and wellbeing.”
See the letter and names of signers here.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/may/06/oecd-pisa-tests-damaging-education-academics
I think that the move by Singapore is a small but important step in asserting that the value of education does not reside in the scores of students on standardized tests. I regret to say that many politicians in the United State, along with “voice groups” supported by billionaire foundations, still say that scores on standardized tests are the only and best way to hold teachers and schools “accountable.” That is nonsense.
Since the end of the Mao era in the late 1970s, China has looked to Singapore as an example. Could China be the next country to do away with grades and/or tests?
Yong Zhao writes, “In front of me are two documents that could significantly affect the future of the world. I am not exaggerating because these two documents are plans to overhaul education in two of the most powerful nations in the world: China and the United States. If the plans are executed as intended and outcomes achieved as expected, the future will see China moving closer to being a center of innovation and the US? – a nation of test-takers, like China today.”
http://zhaolearning.com/2010/03/24/does-the-u-s-want-what-china-wants-to-throw-away-the-role-of-testing-in-two-national-education-reform-plans/
Is the malignant narcissist in the White House Ameria’s Mao, and his “Make America Great Again”, the same as the horribly destructive Cultural Revolution in China that ended with Mao’s death? During Mao’s Cultural Revolution, China’s public education system vanished for a decade and illiteracy soared.
Mao said, “What should our policy be towards non-Marxist ideas? As far as unmistakable counter-revolutionaries and saboteurs of the socialist cause are concerned, the matter is easy, we simply deprive them of their freedom of speech.”
Mao encouraged attacks on virtually all forms of authority in an attempt to create permanent revolution.
Sound familiar?
Sanity. It’s coming back to town.
Not sane if it’s Martin Seligman – he of torture fame. Please see Steve Nelson above.
Saw it. Commented.
Boy, Singapore’s sane, pragmatic authoritarianism is starting to look adorable compared the psychopathic regime Bannon and Trump are hatching.
Will Singapore drop corporal punishment/caning of its male students? I don’t believe caning is used that widely in schools, the offense committed by the male student has to be quite egregious in nature. Isn’t Singapore a more or less authoritarian type of government? Singapore’s scores are pumped up by all the after school tutoring and “cram” schools.
Thanks to all for an informative thread.
I was struck by a number of words and phrases in the quoted portions of the posting, e.g., “positive and resilient” and “push for character as well as qualifications” and “merit and allowing equal access for all” and “social cohesion” and so on.
So the use of putatively objective and neutral numbers & stats generated by standardized tests to force rank human beings in order to reveal their (supposedly) greater or lesser worth—
Is all driven by something as elusive as values and priorities and likes & dislikes. And as things in the real (not rheeal) world are wont to do, changes have apparently occurred in what’s considered worthy so “well being” and “social mobility” (among others) have assumed a new importance.
Which still gets us nowhere fast, since such a noble ideal as creating “a more equitable society” says nothing in itself but needs to be spelled out. In detail, with facts and logic in a discussion that is ethical, open and wide-ranging.
Or is the appearance of turning (however slightly) to genuine education and learning simply a rebranding of the same old same old?
Hmmmm…
😎
Again, the question is that who are we? Are we human being or political animals?
If we believe in humanity and if we understand that universal humane love will prevail all, then we are focus of being healthy and happy.
Without health and happiness, there will be cruelty, greed and savage with and without innovation.
According to this post, we will know the truth whenever the flow of immigrants goes to the final destination = the most prosperous and secure nation.
In short, so far, Canada is one of the few best CIVILIZED countries WHERE citizens believe in compassion and are willing to help out or support the world cause in humanity. Back2basic
Scrapping grades, especially during the elementary years, and focusing on the well being of the child.
Ah yes, the good old days.
What’s old is new again!
Where does the article say, grades will be dropped or tests will be reduced?
All it seems to say is that “there are things beyond grades”.
Here is an article about Seligman
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2011/01/seligmans-brainwashing-is-not-just-for.html
For example,
“Positive psychology is a quack science that throws a smoke screen over corporate domination, abuse and greed,” Hedges said. “Those who fail to exhibit positive attitudes, no matter the external reality, are seen as maladjusted and in need of assistance. Their attitudes need correction.”
Hedges added that “academics who preach [the benefits of positive psychology] are awash in corporate grants.”
Indeed, Seligman’s CV shows he has received tens of millions of dollars in foundation cash to conduct positive psychology research.
…
Seligman’s biggest payday came last year, when the Positive Psychology Center received a three-year, $31 million, no-bid, sole-source Army contract to continue developing the program.
According to Defense Department documents, “the contract action was accomplished using other than competitive procedure because there is only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirement[s]. Services can only be provided from the original source as this is a follow-on requirement for the continued provision of highly specialized services.”
In 2009, several months after receiving the green light from Casey to develop the CSF program, the Army paid Seligman’s Positive Psychology Center $1 million to begin training hundreds of drill sergeants to become Master Resilience Trainers (MRTs), “certified experts who will advise commanders in the field and design and facilitate unit-level resilience training across the Army.”
More than 2,000 MRTs have been trained since CSF was rolled out in October 2009. The Army intends to certify thousands more MRTs.