Testing: Revisiting the Consequences

By Charlotte Mason, China Exchange Initiative

Catching Up or Leading the Way: American Education in the Age of Globalization
By Yong Zhao
228 pp. ASCD/Alexandria/2009

When ASCD speaks, educators listen. This venerable organization features the issues of the day in its regular flagship magazines (Educational Leadership and Education Updates), often by presenting two or more sides to each issue. By choosing to publish Yong Zhao’s new book, ASCD is implicitly asking us to question the role of and movement toward high stakes testing in our educational system, and to take pride in our unique, historic, and innate American strengths. In his book, Zhao draws from his personal experience of growing up in rural Sichuan and going to school in China, his wife's more privileged education in Beijing, his children's experiences in schools in Michigan, and a great deal of scholarly research in the field of education.

Zhao writes compellingly, especially when speaking from personal experience. He favorably compares the United States' highly decentralized, highly individualized educational system to China's highly centralized, test-driven educational system. He cautions us not to glorify or emulate China's system, which has been highly effective at teaching students how to take tests, but sadly lacking in providing a rich, broad, and happy experience for them. In fact, China's current educational reform has set out to borrow from American strengths: "more local autonomy, more flexibility, more choice, less testing, less content, and less standardization (p. 60)." Zhao describes the experience of attending his children's school talent shows as an example of the inclusiveness, the encouragement of initiative and responsibility, the valuing of diverse skills, and the development of self-esteem as strengths of our system. He believes that in education, "What really matters . . . may lie somewhere else [other than in standardized curriculum, teacher knowledge, standards, and testing], such as in the overall philosophical approach to education, the aggregation of all activities outside and inside the school, and how students and teachers treat one another (p. 46)." Where many Chinese observers see problems in the diversity of the U.S., Zhao sees its value. Zhao attributes complementary talents, innovation, ability to change, tolerance, and second chances to our diversity of race, ethnicity, and skills. Zhao is enjoyable to read, while stimulating us to think hard about the direction we are taking in U.S. education today.

Zhao offers many examples of best practices, suggestions for defining necessary knowledge of the future, and anticipated uses of technology. Closer to home, as a former teacher in the Newton Public Schools, I was surprised and delighted to find Zhao's reference to Newton's commitment to international exchange, as an example of a valued international experience for students and reference to Harvard's Fernando Reimers, who served for a time as co-chair of the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's Global Education Advisory Council.

And yet, we must ask ourselves how it is possible for a student from a rural village in Sichuan Province, not particularly gifted in English language learning and not very good at technology, as he describes himself, to rise to become a distinguished English professor in the U.S., an expert in technology education, and an inventor of computer games. Is it not likely that Dr. Zhao is an exemplar of the combined strengths of both the Chinese and American systems of education? Perhaps it was his education in China that enabled him to develop his work ethic and his scholarly discipline and his education in the U.S. that enabled him to follow his interests and dreams.