Our new report, International Lessons about National Standards, authored by William Schmidt, Richard Houang, and Sharif Shakrani of Michigan State University, is out today. Of course, you'll want to read it from cover to cover...I say that because there are lots of interesting nuggets not only in the body of the report, but in the appendices, too. Appendix A, for instance, includes short profiles of each country's educational system. Here are three tidbits from there to whet your appetite for further reading:
In 2007, the country decided for the first time to test all students in grades 6, 9, and 10 with plans to release the results at the regional, district, and school levels...It seems President Lee Myung-bak was persuaded by key advisors that comparisons and competition among the regions and schools was necessary for Korea's educational and economic advancement. Still others in his administration viewed the "sunshine and shame" approach as crucial to successful exercise of school choice. Unfortunately, some are not sold on the merits of transparent and disaggregated student reports. Teachers and teachers unions, for instance, have vocalized vehement opposition, even organized demonstrations. They argue that since Korean students already do a fine job on standardized measures (such as TIMSS and PISA), they would be better served by sharpening their "creative" skills. Tighter focus on exam results, they say, will only retard such progress.The Korean government, treading lightly (at least for now), is taking a piecemeal approach to open disaggregation of test results. Results from the 2008 national assessment, in fact, were broken out by province (not school) and only results from high-performing provinces were presented. But that's not supposed to last long. School-level results (presumably for the high-, mid-, and low-performing schools) are scheduled to be publicly released in 2011.
Interestingly, all schools in the Netherlands--public and private alike--are equally funded by the government. Further, private providers are allowed to open schools that align with their religion or philosophy and have them funded by the government under the following conditions: They have a legally recognized competent authority (also referred to as the school board) to administer and manage the school; they adhere to all "state and non-state" laws about the condition of the buildings, teacher qualifications, and curriculum and secondary requirements; they do not charge mandatory tuition (though they can ask for contributions); they do not select students to attend (though they can reject students whose parents do not ascribe to the religious or philosophical orientation of the school); and the school can prove that it will attract students. Basically this means that virtually anyone can apply to open a school as long as they adhere to the national requirements and standards as well as take the national tests. Unlike in the United States, there appears to be little concern regarding using public money to fund parochial schools. In short, the Netherlands have broad parameters around what and who are considered legitimate providers of education.
In 1965, Singapore, a small city-state with an ethnically and racially diverse population of over 4 million, centralized its education system to strengthen its multiethnic and multilingual population. The most notable of these changes included the creation of universal primary education, more equal treatment of the Chinese, Tamil, Malay, and English languages, and the development of a common syllabus for all school subjects.A mid-1980s recession forced Singapore's Ministry of Education (MOE) to strategically decentralize the system once again in pursuit of greater efficiency and increased quality. In 1988, eight select "distinguished schools"??gained independent school status with increased autonomy and flexibility in hiring staff and managing fiscal and management responsibilities. Lessons learned from that experience encouraged the MOE to establish 18 "autonomous schools"??in 1994 and provide them with funds to encourage innovative programs...
Despite this decentralization, the Ministry of Education has continued to control matters related to standards, course syllabi, and assessment. In other words, since the 1980s, schools have gained more autonomy in implementing policies, but the central authorities still determine the rules of the game. But one element of Singapore's educational system that has remained centralized is its teacher training program. Since 1971, there has been one institution in charge of teacher preparation (though it's had various names). Today it is the National Institute of Education (NIE) located on the campus of the Nanyang Technological Institute (NTU).
There's lots more in the report....enjoy!
