New comparative education study shows what we might be doing wrong

A new study (pdf) out this week, “Standing on the Shoulders of Giants” by Marc Tucker, compared the US approach to education with other education systems in Canada, China, Finland, Japan and Singapore, “all of which are far ahead of the United States,” in order to see what we should be doing differently. I have summarized some of the most interesting observations. Here are 4 things those other countries do differently.

They have much less national (or state) testing, but when they do, it matters. In the lower secondary school, for example, they require that all students meet a basic education standard before they pass through a “gateway” (only Canada does not have this). The gateway helps sort out what kind of courses they will take in upper secondary, depending on whether they aim to go on to jobs or polytechnics or universities when they graduate. “The idea of grade-by-grade national testing has no takers in the top-performing countries. These countries do national testing at the gateways only.”

Their tests are high quality and require that students actually understand the material. They cannot be “test prepped.” This also means that GPA (or local equivalents), which are susceptible to cheating by students and schools and retaliation by teachers, become less important.

Their “national curriculum goes far beyond mathematics and the home language, covering, as well, the sciences, the social sciences, the arts and music, and, often, religion, morals or, in the case of Finland, philosophy.”

“Few, if any, of the upper secondary school examinations are scored by computers and much of the examination is in the form of prompts requiring the student to work out complex problems or write short essays.  They do this because the ministries in these countries have grave doubts about the ability of computers to properly assess the qualities they think most important in the education of their students.”

The whole study is well worth a read if you are interested in these issues.

Photo: Wikipedia – Onderwijsgek (it shows standardized testing in the Netherlands)