Survey Shows Rise of Asia

Abstract

Asia was the big story when the latest global school report card was released a few months ago. Of the 65 countries and provinces that participated in OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which measures the performance of 15-year-olds in reading, math, and science, most of the top scorers in all three subjects were countries and provinces. Shanghai and Hong Kong SAR in China led the way, followed by Singapore, Korea, and Japan. By contrast, the United States, a leader in education for much of the 20th century, is ranked only 14th in reading, 17th in science, and 25th in mathematics. When the actual student scores in all three subjects are averaged, the United States scores 26th out of 65 places. This isn't because American education has gotten worse, but because other countries are getting better much faster. As the PISA results indicate, nowhere is the rapidity of educational change and improvement greater than in Asia. How have school systems managed to produce such high achievement? It's tempting to ascribe this success to culture, but, though a high cultural value placed on education is a useful asset on which to build, a generation ago these systems had only weak education systems or schools for just the elite. Nor do all systems produce superior performance. Much of South and Southeast Asia, for example, does not compare well on international education benchmarks. And while Shanghai has produced world-class performance and shows what the education potential of China could be, large disparities in academic performance currently exist between different regions of China. While there is no one Asian way to academic success, the high-performing school systems do share some common characteristics: * Commitment to the centrality of education for driving economic growth. Political leaders understand the essential link between education and economic development in a global knowledge economy. This conviction has ensured a constant dynamic focus on education over more than two decades that has allowed these systems to keep moving forward despite periodic changes in political leadership. * Clear rigorous standards and aligned systems. systems establish high academic standards and a demanding core curriculum, especially in math and science, which clearly define the content to be learned. Local education decision makers have increasing autonomy, but it's within a coherent framework of curriculum and examinations/assessments that drive textbook content, teacher preparation, and professional development. Thus, there is more consistent implementation of education policies and practices across schools that results in strong overall performance. * High-quality teachers and principals. These systems recruit from among the top high school and college graduates and have comprehensive approaches to training, compensating, developing, and evaluating teachers. Teachers are highly qualified in their subjects--for example, in math and science--and there often are specialist math and science teachers in elementary schools. Classrooms in these systems are much more open to routine observation by peers, principals, and student teachers. Regular teacher study and research groups make the improvement of teaching in a school a collective professional effort. Principals are carefully selected and trained from among the best teachers. All of this attention to human capital creates tremendous capacity at the point of education delivery--the classroom. * Investment of resources where they make a difference. …