School Reform

Though China has the reputation of strong basic education especially in Mathematics, the US government seems try to jump to higher grade by the means of school reform. When TNCLBA(The No Child Left Behind Act) gave a sign to require the states to educate impoverished children up to the same standards as their affluent counterparts, in exchange for federal aid. It also shows the deliberate attempt to reinforce reform by the Congress, which began in 1990's when the education system to introduce standards-based accountability systems that quickly showed promising achievements.

According to the part annual survey of Education Week magazine about student achievement which turned out that the student performance made a good progress, especially for fourth-grade math, which had gone up nearly two grade levels since 1992.

Due to the decision and deliberate attempt by the government, the achievement should cover all of the country. However, things did not go as planned. In the comment of The New York Times - " the achievement gains have fallen far short of what Congress hoped of when it passed the landmark federal law and also far short of what the country needs to keep pace with its economic rivals", it wholly gives out the attitude of majority to education system.

There are definitely lots of problems in it. First of all, race is still the cliche but also the most biggest problem, quite huge distance between Black, Hispanic and White, impoverished and rich, though there had been apparently gains of Black and Hispanic and the low-income fourth graders had risen at nearly three times the national average, which had substantially erased the while-minority achievement gap. Another problem is the geographic variation which might be the reasons of different teaching faculties and equipment in different states. And this quite reminds us about the contemporary appearance of achievement and worries about such impermanence success would evaporate soon.

And the journalist also had his foresight - " with the easy achievement gains easily already behind us, the next level of progress will require rigorous systemic change." The National Assessment of Educational Progress also makes its effort to enforce the system of assessment of teaching which will infect their payment to urge highly qualified teachers to fulfill their duties. And it also tries to find out new method to support and transform failing school, beyond labeling them failures and which would be considered as inspiring elements of better performance earlier.

After talking about the school reform in US, let's face the situation of Chinese education system. Though there are many celebrities coming from abroad talking their observation and experiences about the huge divergence between east and west, and give their suggestions and solutions toward current system, however I don't quite get it whether it is because of the self-deficiency of current system or the decisions are out of fully consideration, the outcome seems not very directly. Maybe the deficient of education resources make the problem complicated and many teachers confining themselves within the restriction of exam framework, they can't let the students truly do according to their interests and features. We really look forward to the truly reformation of education, which is key for the future progress for a developing country, no science achievement means nothing to a fast developing giant.