The Chinese Education System, Despite The Education Reformer Myths, Is Actually A Mess

When the 2010 PISA test scores came out, the NY Times published this:

With China’s debut in international standardized testing, students in Shanghai have surprised experts by outscoring their counterparts in dozens of other countries, in reading as well as in math and science, according to the results of a respected exam.

American officials and Europeans involved in administering the test in about 65 countries acknowledged that the scores from Shanghai — an industrial powerhouse with some 20 million residents and scores of modern universities that is a magnet for the best students in the country — are by no means representative of all of China.

About 5,100 15-year-olds in Shanghai were chosen as a representative cross-section of students in that city. In the United States, a similar number of students from across the country were selected as a representative sample for the test.

Experts noted the obvious difficulty of using a standardized test to compare countries and cities of vastly different sizes. Even so, they said the stellar academic performance of students in Shanghai was noteworthy, and another sign of China’s rapid modernization.

The results also appeared to reflect the culture of education there, including greater emphasis on teacher training and more time spent on studying rather than extracurricular activities like sports.

“Wow, I’m kind of stunned, I’m thinking Sputnik,” said Chester E. Finn Jr., who served in President Ronald Reagan’s Department of Education, referring to the groundbreaking Soviet satellite launching. Mr. Finn, who has visited schools all across China, said, “I’ve seen how relentless the Chinese are at accomplishing goals, and if they can do this in Shanghai in 2009, they can do it in 10 cities in 2019, and in 50 cities by 2029.”

...

“We have to see this as a wake-up call,” Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in an interview on Monday.

“I know skeptics will want to argue with the results, but we consider them to be accurate and reliable, and we have to see them as a challenge to get better,” he added.

Bloomberg Businessweek reported the following this week:

In an international survey released just over two years ago, high school students from Shanghai scored at the top in math, science, and reading. Some Americans saw this as a Sputnik moment—a wake-up call for the rest of the world to better educate its young or risk falling behind the Chinese. In March, China’s leadership announced that education spending totaled 7.79 trillion yuan ($1.26 trillion) over the last five years, reaching a target of 4 percent of gross domestic product. “The quality and level of education in China was comprehensively raised,” said outgoing Premier Wen Jiabao on March 5. 

The reality is China’s students receive educations of greatly varying quality. Their parents often pay a lot for it, depending on where they live and how ambitious their choice of school—even though China is committed to a system “implemented uniformly by the State,” with “no tuition or miscellaneous fee,” according to the 1986 Compulsory Education Law. Yet some rural families struggle to pay school costs as high as one-half their meager incomes, while up to 130 students crowd country classrooms, according to Yang Dongping, an education expert at the Beijing Institute of Technology and the dean of the 21st Century Education Research Institute. Yang adds that urban parents pay introduction fees of as much as $10,000 to middlemen to win entry into the better schools.

The central government’s decision in 1994 to have localities return the lion’s share of their tax revenue to Beijing has made it much harder for poor cities to afford a decent school budget. The annual education expenditure per middle school student in 2010 in Beijing totaled 20,023 yuan, more than six times the 3,204 yuan spent in the poor province of Guizhou, according to the Ministry of Education. Students in an impoverished district of Hubei province were told to bring their own desks to class last year. After the media widely reported this, Chinese vented their ire at officials. “This brings shame on the government,” wrote one microblogger on Sina Weibo (SINA). Says Bill Bikales, chief of social policy and reform for children at Unicef China: “When China did the recentralization of finances 20 years ago, they never really confronted the issue that there would be huge gaps in services between wealthy and poor areas.”

The consolidation of country schools—in response to declining numbers of rural kids as China urbanized—has worsened conditions, as closings outpace shrinking enrollments. In 1997, China had 630,000 primary schools; in 2011 it had 254,000, with average class sizes soaring, says education expert Yang. Primary schools are now more than five kilometers away from home on average, says Yang, so children face long commutes on dangerous country roads.

Rural families pay up to 2,000 yuan annually in education costs, due in part to higher transportation expenses or dormitory fees for students who opt to board. To secure desks near the teacher, families pay 300 yuan per month, says Liao Ran, who runs programs in Asia combating graft for Berlin-based Transparency International. While a few years ago the youngest students almost all went to school, now as many as 900,000 6- to 8-year-olds drop out every year, says Yang.

Oh, and if you think waitlists for TriBeCa kindergartens are bad, here's how they do that kind oif thing in China:

Even registered urban children face heated competition to get into so-called key schools. Officials focused resources on such schools to train experts to industrialize China in the 1950s. While elitism was supposed to stop with the 1986 law, Yang says parents pay middlemen fees, and make school donations from 200,000 to 800,000 yuan, to win entry to the most sought-after institutions. “Corruption in education has become rampant,” says Transparency International’s Liao. 

“In China you are supposed to be able to enjoy free education. But in every good school, all the children are from families with money or connections,” says Guo Jing, 38, who tried to get her daughter into a key school in 2008. “Good connections are all based on spending.” She says she paid a middleman 20,000 yuan to secure a spot in Beijing’s exclusive Zhongguancun No. 3 Primary School but balked when he wanted an extra 10,000 yuan. Her 11-year-old daughter is now at a less prestigious school.

Despite the caterwauling from education corporatists like Chester Finn and Arne Duncan, the Chinese education system is a mess.

You wouldn't know that from the news, would you?

Or from the education reformers.

Or the Obama administration.

But it's true.

Let me hit some of the highlights from the Bloomberg Businessweek article again, just for emphasis:

Close to a million 8 and 9 year old's are dropping out of school every year in China.

Some rural schools have class sizes of 130.

Parents pay to get their kids seated closer to the teacher's desk.

Some kids have to bring their own desks to school.

Parents have to tender enormous bribes to get their kids into the "right" schools.

And the way schools are financed across the country is a nightmare, making even the American school financing system look okay by comparison.

These are the realities and they surely are a Sputnik moment for me.

It means the meme we have heard all these years - the Chinese are beating us! the Chinese are beating us! - is starting to look like those warnings in the 80's about the Japanese becoming the most powerful economy in the world.

How'd that work out?

What Bloomberg Businessweek describes is a very uneven education system at best in China, with many kids having a pretty terrible education experience and either dropping out or getting "left behind" while the ones from families of means receive an excellent education that opens the door for all kinds of opportunities.

Funny, but that's the meme that Finn, Duncan and the rest of the education corporatists tell us about the American system.

Turns out it's the case in China too.