by Vishaal Kuruvanka
May 30th, 2022

In our assessment of our own education system, it is wise to see how other world powers have designed their education systems. While we may not be able to replicate all of their structures due to different population sizes and different forms of government, this exercise exposes us to new ideas and visions on what education can be. 

To gauge the US’s current standing among countries across the world there is one exam that has filled the role in recent decades. It should be stated here that the PISA assessment by no means is the only gauge of educational success but provides an examination given to students across the world to gauge their literacy and problem solving abilities. The National Center for Education Statistics defines the PISA exam as: 

“The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an international assessment that measures 15-year-old students' reading, mathematics, and science literacy every 3 years. First conducted in 2000, the major domain of study rotates between reading, mathematics, and science in each cycle. PISA also includes measures of general or cross-curricular competencies, such as collaborative problem solving. By design, PISA emphasizes functional skills that students have acquired as they near the end of compulsory schooling. PISA is coordinated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), an intergovernmental organization of industrialized countries, and is conducted in the United States by NCES”

The most recent examination in 2018 places the US 38th place for mathematics, 19th for science and 13th for reading. The exam scores also show China leading the pack with a 30 point lead over their closest competitor, Singapore, followed by Estonia, Japan, South Korea and Canada. While there may be different methods of testing student learning outcomes, this exam shows that the US is well behind its global allies and adversaries. Because China is the US’s main economic competitor in the coming century, it is important to understand China’s rapid growth in K-12 education and its human capital. 

Education in China:

Dating back to ancient times, education has handedly shaped Chinese society. From 600 AD onwards civil service examinations were given in an effort to stabilize their political system. This stable hierarchy in turn allowed for a more prosperous society where wars did not break out frequently, a prevailing issue in ancient china. Consequently this time period in China produced many innovations in technology, science and mathematics and was the first to issue paper bank notes in history. The early intuition to set up a civil service examination system shows the emphasis that Chinese leaders and culture placed in education. 

The next noteworthy advance within the Chinese education system came after the cultural revolution, focused on modernizing their economy from an agrarian focus towards manufacturing and technology. In 1985 the Chinese Communist Party named science and technology as the most important focuses for education to make sure their workforce was ready for the pervading forces of PCs, the internet and other technological innovations. This strong focus on education can be partly attributed to the political leaders within China. John Doerr, investor and venture capitalist at Kleiner Perkins, remarked that 

“ You talk to the leadership in China, and they are all engineers and they get what is going on immediately. The Americans don’t, because they’re all lawyers.” 

Bill Gates said

 “The chinese have risk-taking down, hard work down, education, and when you meet with Chinese politicians, they are all scientists and engineers. You can have a numeric discussion with them —- you are never discussing ‘give me a one-liner to embarrass [my political rivals] with.’ You are meeting with an intelligent bureaucracy.”

Because China’s political leaders had backgrounds in mathematics and science, they were able to foresee what the future held for their country. Consequently they chose to shore up their economic defenses by strengthening the minds of their people. 

Modern Chinese Education Among Other Countries

Since the early 2000s, it is clear that artificial intelligence and machine learning have become increasingly important in the capitalist world. All industries have turned into banks of data, ready to be analyzed and made sense of. As data becomes the oil of the 21st century, companies are actively procuring and analyzing large sets of data to find useful patterns. 

In preparation for the era of data as the new oil, China has made computer science a mandatory portion of their educational curriculum. Wealthy cities such as Beijing and Shanghai have reported close to 95% literacy, mostly equivalent to other developed countries. The Chinese government has a tight control of what is taught in the classroom. As reported by the New York Times, “government has maintained tight ideological control over the universities, and high schools are entirely focused on test preparation, but there has been room for innovation in the grades 1-to-9 system.… As the Chinese economy slows and instability grows, the government wants to ensure maximum control in the classroom." (NYT). 

Towards the end of Highschool, Chinese students take the GaoKao exam which will determine which college they will gain admission to. There are only about 2/3 seats available to colleges and if a student scores in the bottom 1/3 then they will either have to redo the process again for another year or go to vocational school and take a lower paying blue collar job. Because their secondary schooling is focused upon one set of testing, it is easier for students to understand where they should spend their most time and unifies learning standards for the overarching country. Most high performing PISA scoring countries have students prepare for one nationalized exam which determines their future for college. For example in South Korea, schooling is a long and arduous task with tutoring usually necessary for students to score in top percentiles. In both of these countries, there is high pressure for the students to perform well. 

Finland Education System

Finland routinely scores within the top 10 countries on the PISA exam. When the exam was administered in 2003, it ranked first for science and reading and second for mathematics. One of the hallmarks of the education system in Finland, which differs wholly from the US’s system, is that no stratification of students(based on merit) occurs within the first nine years of basic education. The reasoning behind this measure is that students at a younger age are not fully aware of their capabilities and it does not fare well to send implicit messages to students at a young age that they are not capable of doing advanced mathematics, reading or science. In theory, this aspect of the Finland education system better echoes one of the virtues of the US education, an open and forgiving system, given by Goldin and Katz. 

Finland also has a national exam, given at the end of high school, which is given to all students to determine their future. As reported in Amanda Kipling’s book, the smartest kids in the world, the students know why and how school is important to their future. They keenly foresee that if they do not do well on their end of course exams, their economic futures look bleak and for most of them, school is the only means of advancement. 

Takeaways

All countries mentioned in this section all have one important set of tests which usually culminate at the end of high school to determine their college placements. There are a multitude of tests that we have here in the US (SAT, ACT, AP, Finals) most of which confuse the average student and do not convey a sense of importance on the exams. All of these exams serve to test college readiness so there should be one set of exams which need to be passed to graduate high school and are the key determinant in college placement. In my algebra 2 course, I was asked to add in ACT/SAT math into my already jam-packed set of objectives, which bore little resemblance to the course or my end of course exam.Creating these standardized exams are not hard, as we already test these topics well. If the US Government federalizes testing standards so that there is one set of tests to pass, then learning standards can be focused towards them and can simplify learning for teachers and students. 

This discussion also draws upon the fact that students across the world are taking highly rigorous courses in math, science and reading to prepare themselves for the digital age. These countries also have a comprehensive testing structure to monitor learning outcomes. Here in the US, we must make sure that all students are taking the most rigorous courses available to them. The standard that we hold our students up to, is the most important indicator of our country’s attitude towards success. Do we want our children to live in a world where we are no longer the dominant economic and military power? If we do not want them to, then we must hold our students to a higher standard to prepare them to compete on the world stage.  As we have discussed at length what other countries have done, the next essay will support the argument that a new framework is needed for our schools to sit upon with examples of policy experimentation from US history.