14 September 2010 13,061 5 Comments

Don’t Romanticize Testing in China

A number of people alerted me to an article in the New York Times entitled “Testing, the Chinese Way.” The article suggests more testing for American students based on the author’s over-generalized and romanticized experience with her children’s testing experience in a Western school that happens to be located in China.

In fact, I am not opposed to the types of “tests” or formative assessment the author describes: “the tests felt like so many puzzles; not so much a judgment on your being, but an interesting challenge.” I am puzzled by the author’s reference to testing in China as evidence to justify her proposal because many American teachers already do so in their classes. My own children who have attended schools in the U.S. have certainly had such experiences in the forms of homework and in-class quizzes from first grade on. And I myself often play “testing” games with my children by challenging them with spelling, quick mental math problems, or finding the capitals of a country, all in a fun way. There is no need to evoke China as the example.

A bigger problem with this article is that the author, intentionally or unintentionally, may lead people to believe American schools need more standardized, high-stakes testing that conform to single standards and are used to evaluate schools and teachers—the true intention of the Race to the Top program the author cited.

So I wanted to point out a few things in the article: