Standardized Testing in China

I chose to look at testing in China for two reasons. The first is becasue I hear the U.S. is often compared to China and Japan in our educational strengths or lack of it. My main reason for looking at this country is because I am seeing more Chinese in my classroom and I had an interesting parent teacher conference with the father of one of my Asian students. Keep in mind my Head Start students are three years old and some are non-English speaking. I feel this little guy I am going to speak of is doing an amazing job with all his learning feats. As I spoke to the father about the various skills we look at in our program there were a couple of areas this little one "graded" lower due to the language barrier. What surprised me was when we spoke of a lower area the father would apologize for his son not doing better. I kept explaining this was completely normal for an English Language Learner and a three year-old. This whole long story to say, Chinese students face a highly competitive and stressful examination system (Rotberg, 2006).  In China it is all about the test because that is what gets you into college. The main problem is the rich are the ones who do well as they can afford to prepare the students for the test. The very rich families send their children abroad to learn to avoid testing all together (Lensen, 2011). High school curriculum is entirely based on preparing for the tests completely dominating all other material (Lensen,2011).


Lensen,B. (2011). Standardized testing in China: what it says about American college prep. Retrieved from http://www.straighterline.com/blog/standardized-testing-in-china-what-it-says-about-american-college-prep/

 Iris C. Rotberg(2006) Assessment Around the World November 2006 | Volume 64 | Number 3 NCLB: Taking Stock, Looking Forward Pages 58-63 http://nespap.unescobkk.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/Assessment-Around-the-World.pdf