Archives for category: International
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Yong Zhao on PISA

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2012 //
13

New York Times columnist Tom Friedman had a column a few days ago saying that PISA would soon make it possible for everyone to compare the scores of their school to schools all over the world. No one will be average anymore! Just being able to take tests and compare scores will drive us all to the top!

After I read this with a sinking sensation, thinking of the whole world competing to get better test scores (why?), I asked the eminent scholar Yong Zhao to react to this column.

He sent the following as he was traveling in Australia:

“Imagine, in a few years, you could sign onto a Web site and see this is how my school compares with a similar school anywhere in the world,” says Schleicher. “And then you take this information to your local superintendent and ask: ‘Why are we not doing as well as schools in China or Finland?’ ”

Sounds like a commercial for a global standardized testing service? Well, it is. And it is from one of the most influential media outlets The New York Times and endorsed by one of the most popular voices about globalization Thomas Friedman in an op-ed piece last week http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/08/opinion/friedman-average-is-over-part-ii-.html.

 

The product is OECD’s PISA, the international assessment program that claims to test reading, math, and science skills of 15 year olds. PISA should a great case study of marketing strategy in business schools. In about 10 years, it has been successfully marketed to governments and educational authorities in over 70 countries.

 

PISA has convinced many that it is the gold standard of education quality. Although there are other international assessment programs, which has had a long history, but more countries participate in PISA, which by itself is a great marketing slogan, just like “More Doctors Smoke Camel” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCMzjJjuxQI.

 

 

Up until now, PISA has remained at the system level, reporting averages of groups of students, which has already generated a “PISA Score Race” across the world. With this new round of PISA and the system OECD is developing, it is coming to a school near you and your house. But before you log on and “march to your local superintendent and ask ‘Why are we not doing as well as schools in China or Finland,’ it would be good if you ask the PISA advocates the following questions:

 

  1. Why didn’t the Chinese have a big party celebrating its stunning PISA performance? When the last round of PISA results were released in 2010, China’s Shanghai scored #1 in all three areas, but China, a country eager to celebrate any international achievement, did not even have much national media coverage. In fact, whenever PISA was discussed inside China, it is often associated with “so what?” (Read my blog posts: The Real Reason Behind Chinese Students Top PISA Performance http://zhaolearning.com/2010/12/10/a-true-wake-up-call-for-arne-duncan-the-real-reason-behind-chinese-students-top-pisa-performance/ and The Grass is Greener: http://zhaolearning.com/2011/09/18/the-grass-is-greener-learning-from-other-countries/)
  2. Why the Chinese, who supposedly enjoy the best education according to PISA, spend their life’s savings to send their children to U.S. schools, which supposedly offer a much inferior education? Those who cannot afford to send their children overseas work hard to send their children American schools inside China. If they cannot even do that, they send their children to after school programs modeled after American schools. One of the programs that spread like wildfire in China claims to offer “authentic American K-12 education.” “Attend American Schools in China” is its marketing line.

 

The reason is perhaps best illustrated by OECD itself. A report (http://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/46581016.pdf)  about lessons to learn from high PISA performers produced by OECD says:

 

Compared with other societies, young people in Shanghai may be much more immersed in learning in the broadest sense of the term. The logical conclusion is that they learn more, even though what they learn and how they learn are subjects of constant debate. Critics see young people as being “fed” learning because they are seldom left on their own to learn in a way of their choice. They have little direct encounters with nature, for example, and little experience with society either. While they have learned a lot, they may not have learned how to learn. The Shanghai government is developing new policy interventions to reduce student workload and to refocus the quality of student learning experiences over quantity. (p. 103)

 

Essentially, the issues (and questions we must ask) are:

 

  1. Is what the PISA measures truly valuable? Ultimately, we all want a great education for our children, but does PISA scores really measure the quality of education our children will need?
  2. What is sacrificed to achieve such high scores? Are the sacrifices worth the scores?
  3. If China has such a great education, why don’t we just outsource it to China?

 

Read my op-ed in Education Week: Doublethink http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/07/18/36zhao_ep.h31.html)

 

In a nutshell, American education is far from perfect, but China is not a model for emulation. For more about China, PISA, and American education, read my latest book World Class Learners: Educating Creative and Entrepreneurial Students http://zhaolearning.com/world-class-learners-my-new-book/or Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization http://www.amazon.com/Catching-Leading-Way-Education-Globalization/dp/1416608737/ref=pd_sim_b_1

Categories Education Reform, Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International, Testing

Ola! What About Those Teachers in Brazil!

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2012 //
20

The teachers in Brazil said they would not give tests that did nothing to help their students.

They would not give tests that harm their students by giving them demeaning labels.

Testing is not teaching.

They said they are professionals and cannot be driven to do things that are wrong and violate their professional ethics.

Remember the Hippocratic Oath: “At least do no harm.”

Teachers must do the same as a minimum, to protect the children who are in their care.

Categories International, Testing

In China, the Cost of High Test Scores

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2012 //
6

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and billionaire Bill Gates and gadfly Michelle Rhee wring their hands over American students’ test scores. They look enviously at Shanghai and wonder why we can’t be like them.

But the Los Angeles Times had a story explaining that Chinese educators have mixed feelings about those high test scores. They know that they are squeezing the joy of learning out of their schools and pressuring children to grind, grind, grind. They worry that their students lack creativity and imagination.

Before we follow China’s example, we should think about the qualities that we value. Do we want good test-takers or do we want creativity and innovation? Do we want obedient and compliant workers or do we want divergent thinkers? Which will serve us better in the decades ahead?

Categories Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International, Testing

A Good Idea for StudentsFirst

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2012 //
33

This reader has some good ideas for StudentsFirst’s next campaign, now that the Olympics is over:

It really disgusted me how Rhee compares education in the US to being in the Olympics and how we wouldn’t want countries like Luxembourg and Hungary to get more gold medals than us, yet they are beating us in education. I mean, seriously?
Luxembourg?

Luxembourg has a $80,119 GDP and is one of the most wealthy of countries. Their children learn 3 mandatory languages in school, and they only have a 4.5% child poverty rate. Of course, those students are going to be more successful.

Hungary, on the other hand, only has a $19,591 GDP. However, when I looked at comparisons in literacy and math, the U.S. and Hungary were close in many areas, usually with the U.S. edging Hungary out a little. Hungary has a 10.3% child poverty rate.

The United States has a $48,386 GDP. Much higher than Hungary, but much lower than Luxembourg. The U.S. also has a 22.4% child poverty rate, second only to Mexico, which has 26.2. (I got these statistics from NationMaster.com)

To me, one of the greatest factors in education is poverty! It’s kind of like the little dirty secret that keeps getting swept under the rug. The U.S. needs to start addressing this. The school I teach at has a 75% free and reduced lunch population. These kids are more worried about the next meal than the next test. According to the US Census Bureau, “more than one in five children in the United States (15.75 million) lived in poverty in 2010. 2010. More than 1.1 million children were added to the poverty population between the 2009 ACS and the 2010 ACS. The 2010 ACS child poverty rate (21.6 percent) is the highest since the survey began in 2001.”

If StudentsFirst really cared about putting their students first, they would put their money into addressing the poverty issue instead of making insulting advertisements like the one with the out of shape Olympian.
Categories International, Poverty, StudentsFirst

Spoof on Offensive Rhee Olympics Ad

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2012 //
1

Tim Slekar and his merry band of public education advocates have just released a spoof of the offensive Michelle Rhee/StudentsFirst ad.

The Rhee ad ridicules the United States, students, teachers, public schools, obesity, and gays. The man in her ad is presented as flabby and effete, performing in an Olympic sport called rhythmic gymnastics that is for women only and falling on his back. He is supposedly a representation of American education.

Just as an aside, the international test score rankings are meaningless. They reflect the high rate of poverty among children in the U.S. When the international tests were first given, we came in 11th out of 12. That was in 1964. We have since then gone on to outperform the nations that had higher test scores by every economic measure. In the years from 1964 to the present, our students never had high scores on the international tests. They don’t predict anything.

Here is the spoof.

Categories Education Reform, International, Rhee, Michelle, StudentsFirst

A View from New Zealand

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2012 //
0

As I have noted before, the idea of introducing a “free market” into education has strong appeal to conservative governments in other nations. Pasi Sahlberg of Finland calls this idea the “Global Education Reform Movement,” or GERM, characterized by testing, accountability, competition, and choice. GERM is now infesting New Zealand, which has a very successful education system.

One of the leading anti-national testing sites is called the Treehorn Express, a blog written by NZ educator Phil Cullen. While the names and organizations will not be familiar to you, the issues will be. New Zealand officials want to introduce charter schools to New Zealand, and this post sees it as a huge step backward that will mean privatization, funding of religious schools, and eliminating the expectation that teachers in these schools must be credentialed.

If you want to see how the global issues are shaped by American developments, and if you want to learn how your peers in New Zealand are reacting, this is a good place to start.

Categories Charter Schools, Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International

What We Can Learn from Japan

By dianeravitch
August 3, 2012 //
5

The New York Times had a front-page story about a generational divide in Japan.

The article begins, “As Japan has ceded dominance in industry after industry that once lifted this nation to economic greatness, there has been plenty of blame to go around. A nuclear disaster that raised energy costs. A lack of entrepreneurship. China’s relatively cheap work force.”

The article says that the government’s decision to have a strong yen favors the elderly and protects their pensions, but makes Japanese products prohibitively expensive, which is “hollowing out the country’s industrial base” and “exacerbating the nation’s two-decade-long economic stagnation.”

As I read the article, I thought about how American policymakers look enviously at Japan’s high test scores on international assessments.

And it struck me that the economic problems in Japan are not caused by the schools. And the high test scores are not a source of entrepreneurship, nor have they guaranteed a strong economy.

All this deserves consideration. In our nation, our greatest strength is creativity, innovation, risk-taking, and imagination.

Now our policymakers want us to use Japan and other nations with high test scores as a model, claiming that this will lead us to even greater economic growth in the future.

Japan’s dilemma today disproves the theory on which contemporary corporate-driven school reform is based.

Let us learn from their example.

Economic decisions drive the economy. Creative people build a better economy. Higher test scores do not produce a better economy, nor do they nurture the creative genius needed for future innovation.

Will there be an “aha!” moment when leaders of the corporate reform movement realize they are on the wrong track?

Categories Corporate Reformers, Economy, Education Reform, Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International, Testing

A Debate about U.K. Education

By dianeravitch
August 3, 2012 //
3

A reader in the U.K. Offers a dissent to a previous post:

I think that the current British Government are seeking to emulate the worst travesties present in the US system. This is largely because emulating the best practice in more successful education systems will cost money and as such is the last thing they are likely to do.

I disagree the free schools and academies freedom from following the National Curriculum is not a move towards standardised testing. What it does is give them licence to not teach subjects that they view as peripheral (arts, Design and Technology, Food Technology, RE etc) which is likely to lead on more focus on the subjects that are EBAC subjects. This is likely to result in more standardisation of the curriculum and a significant narrowing of the curriculum. it also allows them to opt out of certain subjects that require expensive specialist rooms or equipment.

The governments decision that Qualified Teacher Status is not needed is a nonsense that can only harm children. It is an attack on the teaching profession and a transparent attempt to worsen teachers pay and conditions and make our ineffectual unions even less effective. It also proves that all their rhetoric about raising the status of the profession was nothing more than a lie.

Their making the process for sacking poor teachers part of the performance management process is ill conceived and makes a poor, meaningless process significantly worse. Their constant teacher bashing displays a dislike of and contempt for the profession that fits in with their decision to allow academies and free schools to employ unqualified teachers.

Sadly there are a large number of teachers that appear to be enthusiastic about the worst of these changes and are determined to be the turkeys that vote for Christmas.

There are those that support performance related pay and local pay bargaining because they for some reason believe these will result in them getting paid more.

There are those career-oriented types that vocally support any nonsense that is introduced without first engaging their brains and looking at it. So desperate are they to appear on message they will endorse any old nonsense and try to make us all embrace it too. When I think of the amount of money that has gone from our schools into the hands of private companies for all kinds of nonsense I despair.

My main concern is that government policy flies in the face of their stated aims.

They say they want to give schools more autonomy:
1) They have dramatically increased the number of schools that are only answerable to the secretary of state for education (and nominally the market).
2) The league tables essentially determine which subjects schools teach and which they focus on most
3) OFSTED (the inspection regime) have a staggeringly prescriptive definition of good teaching which is borderline facistic in its demands that certain things MUST be included in lessons if teaching is to be considered satisfactory or better. Many of these things have little or no evidence to support their inclusion in my opinion.

They say they want to raise the status of the profession:
1) They have removed that requirement that teachers have a teaching qualification
2) They constantly focus on coasting and bad teaching and incessantly denigrate the profession.
3) The constantly misuse statistics and mangle the english language to create the impression that the results are worse than they are.

They say they want to support teachers with behaviour issues:
1) The policy of penalising schools for excluding pupils remains and has in fact been worsened.
2) They constantly claim to have given us new rights. Mostly these are things we didn’t want, need or are not new. (Searching pupils bags, confiscating phones, no notice detentions etc)
3) They have not actually done anything that is likely to make behaviour in schools any better and their constant attacks on the profession are only going to make teachers less respected.

I think that all of these moves are a prelude to privatisation and the creation of a two tier system. The creation of academies once past a certain number of academies will make national pay bargaining impossible. The removal of national pay bargaining is an essential step for the right in the march towards privatisation.
Categories Education Reform, Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International

Creationism in UK Schools, Too: UPDATE

By dianeravitch
July 31, 2012 //
8

I got a tweet from Britain saying that Michael Gove, the minister of education, has approved three new schools for state funding that teach creationism as science.

We know that Gove has been consulting with Joel Klein and the leaders of KIPP and has expressed great interest in charter schools. This seems to be the next step.

It does make you wonder if the world is spinning backwards. When will we see a replay of the Scopes trial?

I was re-reading Albert Shanker’s columns from the late 1990s this morning, and he warned that the greatest danger of the charter school idea was that each would “do its own thing,” have its own curriculum, and even its own version of truth. He was right.

UPDATE: Here is another view of creationism in UK schools: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jul/18/creationist-free-schools-hysteria?intcmp=239

We must remember that US debates are different from those played out in other nations.

Categories Alternate Route To Certification, Charter Schools, Curriculum, Education Reform, International, Vouchers

A Different Perspective from England

By dianeravitch
July 29, 2012 //
5

A reader in the U.K. points out that education issues in the U.S. and U.K. have evolved differently. I am not sure that other readers in the U.K. would agree. There, as here, we have debates about how to educate, what to teach, and who should be in charge. When I visited London a few years ago, I toured “city academies,” which are schools that the government “gives” to wealthy businessmen who are willing to put up about $2 million dollars to build a facility; those I saw were oriented toward vo-tech studies. That seemed to me a clear movement towards privatization.

I don’t know which country is leading and which is following, or whether neither is the right term.

The battles in the U.S. over curriculum content and pedagogy have taken a back seat to the battles over the future of public education and the survival of teaching as a profession.

I hope that other readers in the U.K. weigh in.

As a teacher in England, I follow your blog (and read your books) with a fascination about both the similarities and differences between our education systems. Ideologically the US and England often go through similar fads and exchange thinkers all the time. The current UK government has flirted (I think that’s the best word) with the ideas of the American school reform movement. Most recently Michelle Rhee was over here promoting her own legend and being praised by ministers. However, there are differences as well as similarities.Schools are governed at different levels in our countries. In England (I am glossing over what happens in the other nations of the UK) education is controlled by the UK government, with administrative powers delegated to Local Education Authorities (now just “Local Authorities”) which are the locally elected councils covering cities, London boroughs and counties. These never had as much power as American states (teachers pay and conditions and qualifications were decided nationally) and in many ways may be more comparable to school boards in the US, but were often seen as powerful and unaccountable particularly prior to the 1980s due to the lack of autonomy in individual schools. Power has shifted significantly over the years, with the 1980s seeing an increase in both centralisation (with the setting of the national curriculum and new tests and exams and creation of OFSTED, the national schools inspectorate) and decentralised to schools (with schools being given more responsibility to run their own finances).A lot of political debate since then has centred over where power should lie. The underlying agenda of that article is about the power of local authorities and also the perception of central government (particularly under the Tories) as supporting traditional education and local government as supporting progressive education. The New Statesman magazine (along with the Guardian newspaper) is the voice of the middle-class left in England and for that reason will assume both that local authorities are good and that traditional education is bad. None of this necessarily maps onto reality, nor onto comparisons with the US. The two new(er) types of school that the article opposes are Academies, which are former local authority schools given more power and autonomy, and Free Schools which are new schools set up by parents. While comparisons can be made with Charter Schools and the US situation the following differences are probably key:

1) The English National Curriculum and testing system are already in place. Far from being part of a movement for standardised tests, Academies and free schools are given more freedom from the National Curriculum.

2) The closing of “bad schools” is not yet on the agenda. This may be because demographics mean new schools can be introduced to cope with a rising school population without closing old schools. It might also reflect the fact that there are not, as yet, very many free schools.

3) The traditional vs. progressive faultlines are more clearly on display in the debate here. That is why the charter schools mentioned are KIPP (who are quite traditional on discipline) rather than, say, the online charter schools you have been describing recently. Although some of the free schools can easily be described as “progressive” this is not something the media says much about, and the last thing the New Statesman would admit to.

4) Despite a lot of controversy over exam standards here, our exams have not become mutiple-choice, short answer messes like the American ones and only one of our three main exam boards is private. The government has shown a preference for essay questions, and more challenging exams.

5) Our teaching unions are terrible. They oppose everything but stop nothing and are barely able to work together. The government finds them a useful scapegoat but they really count for nothing.

6) The government has held off on privatisation. A lot of the debate is not about what they are doing to involve private companies, but what they might do in the future.

There is definitely the potential for a US style reform movement lobbying for privatisation and union-busting. There is Teach First, an English equivalent of Teach For America, a lot of similar rhetoric and moves towards unqualified teachers. There are academy sponsors who resemble charter schools chains. But on the whole we are not there yet. I recognise more of the English debate in your older books like “Left Back”, than in “The Death and Life of the Great American School System”. Curriculum content is more controversial than anything else. To give examples, the most heated debates in English education recently have been over whether to teach phonics and whether exams have got easier and what to do about that.
Categories International, Privatization
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »