Living in a Moment of Tension in School Reform
Dear Diane,
My current skepticism about all data, plus my own experience in Shanghai, makes me suspicious of theShanghai test-score data. I'm also always suspicious about 100 percent of any population doing anything! It's a figure that innately arouses my suspicions. Furthermore, I discovered that Shanghai public schools were neither free nor universally available to all. "Immigrants" (from the countryside) are expected to leave their children back home in what everyone agrees are very inadequate local schools. I was told that those who bring their kids with them often then apply to cheap private schools. Were they included in the sample?
I'm also convinced by Yong Zhao of Michigan State University that the extreme conformity of Chinese education is what they too worry about—although they seem unwilling to abandon the standardized-testing focus. (I was there on the day when exams for secondary schools were taking place and saw thousands of cars in front of testing sites as parents waited anxiously to meet their youngsters after the exams.) I also don't know much about the kind of exams taken in such schools—do you?
The Chinese Communists face a dilemma, I suspect. How to produce sufficient numbers of very smart and
