Amber Winkler, Fordham's VP for Research, recently traveled China as a Senior Fellow with the Global Education Policy Fellowship Program (GEPFP). She'll be passing along her observations on education in the People's Republic with periodic ?Postcards from China."
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Education governance is a topic of keen interest at Fordham mostly because we think the manner in which our educational institutions are organized, overseen, and managed is an overlapping colossal mess. We call it our ?marble cake? of governance. So one of the topics that I set out to research on this trip was what education "federalism" looks like in communist China. In other words, what educational powers and/or decision making does the State reserve for itself and what powers are held by provinces, local governments, and schools? Our American study-group leaders told us prior to our departure that when the Chinese can't or won't answer your questions, they will simply respond, "It's complicated." That's the answer my governance questions elicited for the most part.
But let me share what I managed to cobble together from fragments of conversations and other limited research. China has 22 provinces (excluding Taiwan), each of which is governed by a provincial government. The national government (Chinese Communist Party) oversees compulsory education, which requires that children receive a minimum of nine years of schooling (up to grade 9). The State covers a portion of the expense, along with local government, but we heard from at least a couple school administrators (and Marc Tucker agrees) that most parents pay school "fees" of some sort (plus transportation costs in many cases). So there's really no such thing as a free ride, even in the compulsory grades. And the government pays nothing at the high school level; it is totally up to the family to foot the bill. Still and all, figuring out how much it costs to educate a child in China and who pays what under which circumstances is nearly impossible to decipher (the same is true of education finance in many of our 50 states).
That said, what powers reside with the State? Many. It develops and maintains a fairly detailed national curriculum on all core and many non-core subjects (including technology, sports and fine arts) which all schools told us they implement. The majority of provinces are also assigned the same textbooks (though one celebrated school we visited in Xi'an had received special permission from the State to use U.S. textbooks). Equally important, the Ministry of Education (MOE) decides which students will attend which schools at the middle and high school levels (assuming that one's test scores are high enough to get into non-compulsory high school). So, whereas children attend their neighborhood schools at the elementary level (provided they don't pay to go elsewhere), the State sorts adolescents into middle and high schools based on test scores, such that top scorers attend secondary schools with high enrollment rates into prestigious universities. (This also means, of course, that schools instruct children within very narrow bands of achievement.) For high school-aged students who don't make the grade, they can apply to vocational schools if they wish or simply cease formal education. The National College Entrance Exam (NCEE), which determines the fate of high-school youth, is also administered by the State (as is a national teacher exam, more below).[pullquote]But there's growing dissatisfaction with some of the State's policies. So they are loosening the reins--gingerly.[/pullquote]
But there's growing dissatisfaction with some of the State's policies. So they are loosening the reins--gingerly. For instance, at least half of the provinces have been granted permission by the State to develop their own college entrance exam. This has resulted in a set of somewhat independent curricula and textbooks for those regions. Further, we're told that the farther away provinces lie from Beijing, the more autonomy they exercise.
We also learned that the State is more open to for-profit, community, and university partnerships with schools, though school leaders gave us little to go on here, perhaps because those efforts are nascent or nonexistent.
One Chinese scholar, Ka Ho Mok, believes the impetus behind this growing trend is financial:
"...the nature of the work of the State has changed from directly coordinating, administering, and funding education to determining where the work will be done and by whom...By making use not only of market forces but also other forces such as individuals, families, local communities and the society, the state is now saved from being overburdened with a continual increase in educational financing." (Riding over Socialism and Global Capitalism, 2005)
What's left to local governments? They decide cut scores for hiring based on the State-designed national teacher exam. They are also in charge of hiring teachers and principals and assigning them to schools, with the input of sitting school principals if they choose to take it. It's unclear what is left of consequence for school level leaders. That said, we were told more than once that elementary schools had more autonomy in general than middle or high schools since they were further removed from the pressures of placement tests.
What to make of this governance schema? Clearly the State is calling the shots when it comes to weeding out and sorting students; they also have primary control over curricular and assessment matters except when they choose to turn them over to provinces. (They've also engineered a number of teacher assignment policies that I've not discussed.) Local governments serve as the HR department. Schools are left with the crumbs. So, theirs is a tiered cake of governance, not marble. There are slight modifications to this hierarchy but only when the State sees fit. All of which makes me agree with Mun Tsang at Columbia University who summed up Chinese education reform thusly: "Popular pressure for educational change has some possibility of being accommodated as long as it is not a threat to political stability and the party's power."
(I guess the latter has something to do with the fact that the Chinese government has banned Facebook and other social media. I haven't been able to post one stinkin' status update bragging about my trip while I've been here. Darn Communists.)
