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In India, we've had testing since forever, for kids of every age, even to get into kindergarten. My understanding is that this is normal in pretty much every E

In India, we've had testing since forever, for kids of every age, even to get into kindergarten. My understanding is that this is normal in pretty much every East Asian country: HK, China, Korea, Japan. I don't think the education systems in any of these countries can really be considered any worse than any other system, and arguably has churned out way more talented and driven people to contribute to humanity. I am personally anti-test myself, but what is a better option? Someone suggested "lottery", but that idea makes me shudder, as possibly the only option worse than testing. In an ideal world, every student can be accommodated in the learning ecosystem, and we don't require a standardized metric to figure out if a student should advance to the next level. We would also pace what they're being taught to their competencies and give each student personalized learning and testing material. But we are nowhere near being able to do that, from a resource management, personalization design, evaluation or teacher training perspective (anywhere in the world). I have spent much time thinking about this, and I can't come up with a better idea for fairly allocating our education resources for places with ridiculously large number of students, and for evaluating the progress of the partakers of that resource (current students). That is, at least until we invest heavily in researching how to better evaluate students and identify the right metrics to measure and measure them well.

rtpg 12y ago
>In an ideal world, every student can be accommodated in the learning ecosystem[...]We would also pace what they're being taught to their competencies and give each student personalized learning and testing material[...]But we are nowhere near being able to do that I only did up to my first year of high school in the US but there is something like this with AP classes. This is especially prevalent in Math, where the year in which people would start Algebra would vary from 6th grade to 9th grade. You could be paced based off of your level. I remember moving to France after 9th grade and realising that I already knew basically everything that would be taught to me for the rest of high school in Math, because I was able to have such a head-start thanks to my pre-AP Math classes. I think that shows that the American HS system is in fact well adapted to fast learners, as well as accommodating to slower people (the bar could be set pretty low for the baseline classes because the strongest students were in different classes). A corollary to this is that the standardised testing was a joke to the set of students who were in the advanced classes. The biggest waste of time ever. I only experienced Northern Texas' version of this, and from what I heard my understanding is that most school districts in the US could not afford to run programs like this. Thinking back on it, I'm pretty sure Texas has a really good educational system (the results compared to other states are really pretty good considering that Texas is the 4th poorest state in the union).
- aruss 12y ago
  This has been the opposite of my experience. The US school system is extremely inhibitive to fast learners. Everything is on a curriculum, and it's really difficult to get around the bureaucracy to get ahead. I was homeschooled/self-taught since the 2nd grade until about high school when I started attending community college full-time. At that point I was about "even" with my best friend, who is also considered very intelligent. I was then able to pick which semester-long classes to take. For example, I was taking third year calculus my sophomore year, a full year before he was able to take Calc 1. And this was no discrepancy due to ability. (for those curious I applied to colleges at the 'regular' time and am now attending a 4-year institution without transferring any of my credits). The fact of the matter is that the American public school system wasn't developed with education in mind, and now functions more as crowd control than as an educational institution.
  - rtpg 12y ago
    This experience seems to stem from lack of funding, and schools not having access to AP classes. I know I was extremely lucky to be in a school district with funding, I had access to loads of college credit-level classes thanks to that.
bane 12y ago
> but what is a better option? More educational resources.
sergiosgc 12y ago
> In an ideal world, every student can be accommodated in the learning ecosystem, and we don't require a standardized metric to figure out if a student should advance to the next level. I live in an ideal world, then. In my country (PT), education is free and mandatory for 12 years. After the 9th grade, students do their first selection of objective in their student careers. It's here that they are given the choice between technical course or a track oriented towards university. They then study three more years and either proceed to the workforce, to Bsc degrees (3 years) or to Msc degrees (5 years). University, while not free, is not expensive. Tuition is about a thousand euros per year. Even so, we have some of the highest tuition in Europe. Of course, there are dropouts, and some of them economically motivated. It's a problem being worked on. Dropout rate (students not completing the 12 years of mandatory school) was 50% in the 90s, is now below 20% and dropping. It follows that your assessment that we are nowhere near being able to provide education to all of society is plain wrong, at least in Western countries.

rtpg 12y ago

>In an ideal world, every student can be accommodated in the learning ecosystem[...]We would also pace what they're being taught to their competencies and give each student personalized learning and testing material[...]But we are nowhere near being able to do that I only did up to my first year of high school in the US but there is something like this with AP classes. This is especially prevalent in Math, where the year in which people would start Algebra would vary from 6th grade to 9th grade. You could be paced based off of your level. I remember moving to France after 9th grade and realising that I already knew basically everything that would be taught to me for the rest of high school in Math, because I was able to have such a head-start thanks to my pre-AP Math classes. I think that shows that the American HS system is in fact well adapted to fast learners, as well as accommodating to slower people (the bar could be set pretty low for the baseline classes because the strongest students were in different classes). A corollary to this is that the standardised testing was a joke to the set of students who were in the advanced classes. The biggest waste of time ever. I only experienced Northern Texas' version of this, and from what I heard my understanding is that most school districts in the US could not afford to run programs like this. Thinking back on it, I'm pretty sure Texas has a really good educational system (the results compared to other states are really pretty good considering that Texas is the 4th poorest state in the union).

aruss 12y ago
This has been the opposite of my experience. The US school system is extremely inhibitive to fast learners. Everything is on a curriculum, and it's really difficult to get around the bureaucracy to get ahead. I was homeschooled/self-taught since the 2nd grade until about high school when I started attending community college full-time. At that point I was about "even" with my best friend, who is also considered very intelligent. I was then able to pick which semester-long classes to take. For example, I was taking third year calculus my sophomore year, a full year before he was able to take Calc 1. And this was no discrepancy due to ability. (for those curious I applied to colleges at the 'regular' time and am now attending a 4-year institution without transferring any of my credits). The fact of the matter is that the American public school system wasn't developed with education in mind, and now functions more as crowd control than as an educational institution.
- rtpg 12y ago
  This experience seems to stem from lack of funding, and schools not having access to AP classes. I know I was extremely lucky to be in a school district with funding, I had access to loads of college credit-level classes thanks to that.

bane 12y ago

> but what is a better option? More educational resources.

sergiosgc 12y ago

> In an ideal world, every student can be accommodated in the learning ecosystem, and we don't require a standardized metric to figure out if a student should advance to the next level. I live in an ideal world, then. In my country (PT), education is free and mandatory for 12 years. After the 9th grade, students do their first selection of objective in their student careers. It's here that they are given the choice between technical course or a track oriented towards university. They then study three more years and either proceed to the workforce, to Bsc degrees (3 years) or to Msc degrees (5 years). University, while not free, is not expensive. Tuition is about a thousand euros per year. Even so, we have some of the highest tuition in Europe. Of course, there are dropouts, and some of them economically motivated. It's a problem being worked on. Dropout rate (students not completing the 12 years of mandatory school) was 50% in the 90s, is now below 20% and dropping. It follows that your assessment that we are nowhere near being able to provide education to all of society is plain wrong, at least in Western countries.