The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Top-scoring nations give lots of tests, homework
But how would that regimen fly here at home?
The impressive scores of students in China and Estonia in the recently released Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, have attracted a lot of attention, as have the flat scores of U.S. students in math and reading.
America’s top students — those scoring at the highest levels — improved, but our lowest academic achievers, also our poorest children, struggled.
“Students at higher levels are doing well. Students at the bottom are declining,” said Peggy Carr, associate commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, on a recent media webinar on the lessons of PISA. “Whatever is happening in the United States is not the answer for all the students.”
In light of Carr’s comments, it would make sense for America to look for answers in what China, the world’s top performer, and Estonia, Europe’s top entry, have done to boost their schools.
But would American parents like what they saw?
Students in Estonia return home from school to hours of homework. Many Chinese students go from school to evening tutoring. A report last year by the Chinese Ministry of Education found more than 60% of primary school students attend tutoring to enhance their classroom instruction.
The classrooms in China and Estonia are much more regimented than in the United States, where parents want schools to tailor learning to their child’s individual needs
and favor less homework and fewer tests.
Estonia, a country on the Baltic Sea with 1.3 million residents, leapfrogged over the rest of Europe in the past few years by taking education seriously, perhaps a bit too seriously. As the publication Estonian World reported: “... the recipe for success in the Estonian basic education system consists of motivated students, hard-working and professional teachers and supporting homes. Although the success tastes sweet, there is still a lack of one ingredient — joy — and this is the real challenge for Estonia.”
Estonia, which broke from the Soviet Union and reestablished its independence in 1990, emphasizes equity in its schools; it doesn’t track students by ability and maintains a foundational belief that all children can learn. As a result, Estonia has one of the smallest gaps in achievement between rich and poor kids.
Estonia shares a common belief with China that homework matters and reinforces student learning, a matter of ongoing debate in America,
where some elementary schools have abandoned homework. In surveying students on homework, PISA found Chinese teens — whose math scores put them four years ahead of U.S. peers — devote the most hours to homework.
Critics contend the four Chinese provinces that participated in the PISA were cherry-picked as they are China’s most stable and affluent regions. But PISA countered that even poor kids from these provinces, which together contain 180 million people, outperform peers around the world, and that the average family incomes in these provinces, while high for China, are still below those in some other developed nations.
Asked on a media call what America might learn from China, Andreas Schleicher, director of education and skills at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which administers the PISA exam, cited its commitment to teacher quality. China dispatches top teachers to its most disadvantaged schools. That is not true in many nations, including the U.S., where poorer schools get less resources and less experienced teachers, he said.
If the choice is between lower class size or a quality teacher in the classroom in China, Schleicher said, “They go with the qualified teachers.” And those teachers are treated as professionals; they are given time to confer with colleagues, design innovative lesson plans and do research, he said.
The Chinese are also far more beholden to highstakes testing, including the stressful exam for college admission, the gaokao. The gaokao or “high exam” is taken by 10 million students each year in June and lasts up to three days. In the areas around exam centers, construction work is paused, planes diverted and drivers forbidden to honk their horns, all to protect students from distractions and help them to concentrate.
And concentration is critical considering the nature of the questions. A gaokao test this year asked students to compose an essay around this statement: “All things have their own nature. Water tastes light, while salt is salty. If you add water to water, it is still water, if you add salt to salt, it is still salt. Sour, sweet, bitter, spicy and salty, those five tastes coexist in harmony, so do human beings.”