High Stakes Testing and International Schools Are Like Coke and Diet Coke.
I am going to talk a bit about what "High Stakes Testing" means for two International schools. One in Beijing, China and one in Cairo, Egypt. Both schools cater to the moneyed elites in their countries and both are considered to be second or third-tier schools. The schools exist as an alternative for the national system of public education which have extremely high pressure and high stakes exams in the form of the Chinese Gaokao and the Egyptian General Secondary Certificate.
In China, the Gaokao is taken over the course of 2-3 days by around nine million students each year (Wong, 2015). The Egyptian General Secondary Certificate exams are spread out over a three week period in late June/early July (the exact time depends on the time of the holy month of Ramadan for a given year). About 450,000 students a year take the exams (AlTawy, 2014).
The stakes for both exams are high. The Gaokao determines which tier university a student is eligible for (China Central Television, 2015) , and the cumulative score on the General Secondary Certificate determines the student's field of study AND university of attendance. A student attending second to third tier Chinese universities may not find a job after graduation, while a student in a top-tier university can get multiple offers upon graduation (Ash, 2016 and China Central Television, 2016).
Once accepted into a university in China, the student can apply for a major within the university.
In Egypt, the Coordination Office of the Ministry of Higher Education sets the thresholds for majors and the residential address of the student determines the public university the student attends (Pragati Infosoft PVT, 2018). For example, a student in Cairo with a score of 89-92% on the General Secondary Certificate would study Business at Cairo University or Finance at Ein Shams University. Students within that grade range must go to a private university if they want to choose their major.
There are many reactions to these national exams, the logical one is intense preparation/cramming as outlined in the video clip, as well as pressure to cheat. Exam integrity is a major issue with both governments resorting to extreme, and often unsuccessful attempts to stop electronic cheating (AlTawy, 2014, Rabie, 2016, China Central Television, 2016, and Ash, 2016).
Unsurprisingly, many parents with the means look for alternatives to these exams. The investors in the education field in Egypt, and the private non-profit organizations/companies in China have the alternatives in the form of International Schools offering Exams from the USA (AP), England (IGCSE/AS Level) or Europe (IBDP). Foreign administered exams are seen as a less-stressful and more trendy alternative. The schools offer AP/IBDP for the Egyptian school or IGCSE/IBDP for the Chinese school. The Egyptian one also offers SAT preparation courses as well with the Chinese school preferring to use the SAT preparation resources of Khan Academy.
The Cambridge International examinations IGCSE exams are a series of largely paper-based examinations administered by Cambridge University. They are the international version of the General Secondary Certificate of Education (GCSE) exams given in the United Kingdom. The GCSE exams are used to determine whether a student proceeds to vocational training or to study the AS level university preparation exams. The IGCSE curriculum is taught over a two-year period for most subjects and the students choose from a selection of courses offered by the school. The core syllabus is the minimum needed for vocational schools while the extended syllabus is required for subsequent college preparation. The courses are generally quite content heavy, and the exams are given as two or three papers whose duration varies between subjects. There are audio and spoken exams for languages as well as art pieces and musical recordings that are also graded. The exams are generally taken by 15-16 year-olds and the exams can stretch over anywhere from two weeks to a month and a half depending on when the exams for a subject are scheduled. Generally speaking, the more languages a student takes the more drawn out the testing period. Grading is done through the internet after the papers have been electronically scanned in Cambridge England by graders spread around the world. The graders cannot grade the work of students they teach.
Teaching to the test is embedded in the IGCSE syllabi as Cambridge actually recommends that students be allowed to stay home and revise for the exams from about four to six weeks before the exams begin. for Mathematics, they recommend that students be given ample access to past exam papers and that teachers give assessment questions that are pulled from past exam papers, or lightly modified versions of past questions. In my current school, teachers are allowed to revise starting four weeks before the start of the first exam. In addition, the students will sit a two week Mock exam session just after Christmas break.
In the case of the Mathematics IGCSE exams, the students at our school sit the extended Syllabus 0580 exam and it consists of two papers; a ninety minute paper on content, and a 2 1/2 hour paper on problem solving and critical thinking skills. The exams for Math differ from American ones in that they are all short answer questions, but the questions on the second exam can be multi-part ones with as many as 10 different parts. The exams place a high expectation of the student in terms of focus, attention to detail and rigour. The exams are meant to be stressful, but the revision period is meant to provide students with the time needed to gain the confidence to do well. I have mixed feelings about these exams as the questions are really well thought out and a student who does well on the exams will be well rounded and capable in the subject. They will have a solid foundation for further work. So the exams are accurate in what they tell you about a student's abilities and they are a good indicator of future success in university.
International Baccalaureate exams follow he same concept as the IGCSE exams albeit with some differences in four key areas. First, students have to write research papers or lab reports for every subject they choose. Second, they perform community service, exercise, and creative extra-curricular activities with a certain degree of reflection and mindfulness. Third, they have to write a philosophical paper on the Theory of Knowledge to demonstrate a high degree of self awareness of one's knowledge and how it relates to the world. Fourth, they have to write a multi-disciplinary extended essay. The research papers account for 20% of the student's grade, while exams account for 80%. Diplomas are not issued unless the Theory of Knowledge, Extended Essay, and Creativity, Action, and Service (CAS) work is completed to a satisfactory standard. The exams are set up and graded in a similar fashion to that described for the IGCSE exams, but IBO gives much more guidance about how to approach student learning. There is an element of teaching to the exam, but IBO revises the subjects every five years, so there can be dramatic differences between revision cycles, which forces students and teachers to adjust the teaching and learning. The research papers they write, the community service they do, and philosophy work alleviate the reduction of education teaching to the test.
The results for the IBDP exams are published after universities have already accepted students. In order to give the applicants something to put on transcripts, IBO requires teachers to report an "Estimated Grade" in March which represents the teacher's estimate of what a student would get on the actual exam. If the actual result differs from the Estimated Grade beyond a certain amount, IBO investigates and can ban a teacher from teaching IBDP if they feel the teacher is unable to assess students properly or is unable to teach to IBO's requirements.
In both schools the stakes are more about university admissions and marketing the school rather than for the school ranking, funding, or teacher evaluation. As long as the school can trumpet the universities that have accepted the students, the graduation rate is 100%, and the cash flow matches the needs of the school, the results are icing on the cake. The one factor that can complicate this picture is the issue of handling the results of students with learning disabilities that the parents refuse to acknowledge or take measures to address. There are significant numbers of students who are forced to take these curricula when they have disabilities that the school cannot directly address, or cannot get consent to diagnose and meet those needs better. When these students struggle to obtain the unrealistic results expected by the parents, it is often less confrontational for administrators to blame the teacher than try to get the parents to face the disability. The headache management principle takes precedent, it is a smaller headache to let parents think the teacher is the issue, rather than making parents accept the disability. To be honest, getting parents to accept a disability in their child that they have been denying for 17 years is a considerably greater headache than dealing with the headache of handling teacher who is being unfairly blamed for something not entirely in his/her ability to manage...
My current school graduated the first cohort last summer and almost the whole HS staff are novice teachers of the two curricula offered. Administration does not expect high achievement from the start as they realize it takes time for teachers to become adept at teaching new curricula. In addition, the realities of hiring teachers in Beijing play a role in teacher evaluation. The difficulties of getting visas for replacement teachers in a timely fashion, combined with the internet censorship and pollution in Beijing, mean that teacher replacement is not easy, hence the evaluation process tends to the formative; with exam results not factoring in to teacher evaluation at this time. What factors into teacher evaluation the most, is parental comments/complaints. If the comments from parents about a teacher are such that administrators are unable to do anything else but field emails/WeChat messages/phone calls relating to the teacher, the teacher will be dismissed. Headaches create dismissals. If a teacher avoids creating headaches, the teacher will likely stay even if the exam results are less than stellar.
The school in Egypt has graduated several cohorts of AP students, but is also new to the IBDP curriculum. The school also believes in a more holistic approach to teacher evaluation and does not give exam results a heavy weighting in teacher evaluation. Parents in Egypt are not so obsessed with the having their children accepted into foreign universities because parents in Egypt are reluctant to have their children study abroad (only 2,021 Egyptians studied in the USA in 2012 (Clark & AlShaikhly, 2013). Consequently the pressure on teachers for top scores is less. As long as the university acceptance rate is 100%, the consequences for the teacher from low scores is less than in China and less than it would be for American public schools. The administrators of the Egyptian school do interfere in grading and transcript results for students of influential figures in the military and intelligence communities though. When those students get poor exam results, the teacher will be dismissed or reassigned to another grade. Asides from that case, the school shares the views of the school in China that bad results are due to many small factors linked together and the interaction between student and teacher is a complex one. There are many things that need to be examined and addressed in order to improve the results for the future, so they will not generally look at results alone when evaluating teachers.
Accreditation visits from outside agencies factor into how the schools regard high stakes testing. Both schools have to pass accreditation visits from the International Baccalaureate Organization and Advanced Ed for Egypt and WASC for the Chinese school. The AdvancedEd and WASC visits can affect the validity of a school's diploma as invalid diplomas mean universities won't accept students. Failing an IBO curriculum review visit also fatally affects students prospects for university admissions. In all these reviews, exam results do play a role in evaluating the school but they are combined with data about processes and other factors. These schools will be more conscious of exam results when accreditation visits are pending, but I have not seen any teachers dismissed or otherwise dealt with as a result of such visits. Teachers may receive verbal or written reprimands department heads may step down, but there is no dismissal of teachers to date.
Exam results are not featured in the reports for IGCSE and IBDP as they are published after the end of G10 and G12 respectively. Parents receive a separate report from the school which follows a template from Cambridge International Examinations or IBO. While students are working on the curricula, the reports for both schools are electronically generated via Managebac, the school management platform developed for IBO schools. The grades are on a seven point scale with no half marks. Teachers write detailed feedback about student progress. The Chinese school has four character traits that are also included in the report for rigor, respect, relationships and responsibility. These traits are on a four-point scale. Managebac allows teachers to write grades different from the totals calculated in the gradebook because IBO requires an open policy with respect to handing in assignments, so the gradebook may be low due to work not submitted. The grade is listed at the top of the reports for both schools, but most of the visual space is taken up by the teacher comments and the bar graphs that show students progress in the areas/assignments assessed by the teacher. IGCSE grades are from A* to G with a U for ungradeable work that was written in pencil or otherwise unreadable. The grade boundaries differ substantially from the standard North American A-F scale and a correction is applied to convert the grades to the North American scale.
I am mixed about the use of such original National exams and the Lite versions seen in international schools. While the lite versions are less stressful for the students when they are taking the exams, the stress of juggling the deadlines for 5 different research papers, the extended essay, the Theory of Knowledge essay, and the CAS requirements really take a toll on students. The IBDP students do look on the national exam students with envy as they just sit memorizing facts and solving problems. The juggling of deadlines and stress of writing so many papers seems like torture in comparison.
IGCSE exams are quite stressful for Chinese students who have recently come from the Public system of education as there are a lot of situations that the students aren't familiar with, and the chances of misunderstanding things are great. Both exams serve a purpose in that many universities with large applicant pools need a quick metric to efficiently filter applicants. One can argue about how fair that is, but I also think these exams prepare students for some of the more stressful situations in life where one has to deal with a complex problem in a set amount of time. I also think that they make consistent teaching easier than Project-based learning or portfolio work. Again whether one thinks that is good or not depends on whether one believes that education is for molding a society or molding an individual. I don't mind teaching to an exam if it is a well constructed one like the IGCSE math ones. There are many situations in the exam taken from real life without being watered down, and I find it useful to put teenagers under pressure in an exam as it helps them see that the way they see themselves is often inaccurate and it allows one to have a conversation about improving processes of reparation and execution which are higher order thinking skills. While the knowledge assessed on an exam may not be that high in terms of Bloom's Taxonomy, the progress in developing awareness and higher order thinking skills when discussing how to prepare and perform well does have benefit and should not be omitted from the discussion about exam results.
In China, the Gaokao is taken over the course of 2-3 days by around nine million students each year (Wong, 2015). The Egyptian General Secondary Certificate exams are spread out over a three week period in late June/early July (the exact time depends on the time of the holy month of Ramadan for a given year). About 450,000 students a year take the exams (AlTawy, 2014).
The stakes for both exams are high. The Gaokao determines which tier university a student is eligible for (China Central Television, 2015) , and the cumulative score on the General Secondary Certificate determines the student's field of study AND university of attendance. A student attending second to third tier Chinese universities may not find a job after graduation, while a student in a top-tier university can get multiple offers upon graduation (Ash, 2016 and China Central Television, 2016).
Once accepted into a university in China, the student can apply for a major within the university.
In Egypt, the Coordination Office of the Ministry of Higher Education sets the thresholds for majors and the residential address of the student determines the public university the student attends (Pragati Infosoft PVT, 2018). For example, a student in Cairo with a score of 89-92% on the General Secondary Certificate would study Business at Cairo University or Finance at Ein Shams University. Students within that grade range must go to a private university if they want to choose their major.
There are many reactions to these national exams, the logical one is intense preparation/cramming as outlined in the video clip, as well as pressure to cheat. Exam integrity is a major issue with both governments resorting to extreme, and often unsuccessful attempts to stop electronic cheating (AlTawy, 2014, Rabie, 2016, China Central Television, 2016, and Ash, 2016).
Unsurprisingly, many parents with the means look for alternatives to these exams. The investors in the education field in Egypt, and the private non-profit organizations/companies in China have the alternatives in the form of International Schools offering Exams from the USA (AP), England (IGCSE/AS Level) or Europe (IBDP). Foreign administered exams are seen as a less-stressful and more trendy alternative. The schools offer AP/IBDP for the Egyptian school or IGCSE/IBDP for the Chinese school. The Egyptian one also offers SAT preparation courses as well with the Chinese school preferring to use the SAT preparation resources of Khan Academy.
The Cambridge International examinations IGCSE exams are a series of largely paper-based examinations administered by Cambridge University. They are the international version of the General Secondary Certificate of Education (GCSE) exams given in the United Kingdom. The GCSE exams are used to determine whether a student proceeds to vocational training or to study the AS level university preparation exams. The IGCSE curriculum is taught over a two-year period for most subjects and the students choose from a selection of courses offered by the school. The core syllabus is the minimum needed for vocational schools while the extended syllabus is required for subsequent college preparation. The courses are generally quite content heavy, and the exams are given as two or three papers whose duration varies between subjects. There are audio and spoken exams for languages as well as art pieces and musical recordings that are also graded. The exams are generally taken by 15-16 year-olds and the exams can stretch over anywhere from two weeks to a month and a half depending on when the exams for a subject are scheduled. Generally speaking, the more languages a student takes the more drawn out the testing period. Grading is done through the internet after the papers have been electronically scanned in Cambridge England by graders spread around the world. The graders cannot grade the work of students they teach.
Teaching to the test is embedded in the IGCSE syllabi as Cambridge actually recommends that students be allowed to stay home and revise for the exams from about four to six weeks before the exams begin. for Mathematics, they recommend that students be given ample access to past exam papers and that teachers give assessment questions that are pulled from past exam papers, or lightly modified versions of past questions. In my current school, teachers are allowed to revise starting four weeks before the start of the first exam. In addition, the students will sit a two week Mock exam session just after Christmas break.
In the case of the Mathematics IGCSE exams, the students at our school sit the extended Syllabus 0580 exam and it consists of two papers; a ninety minute paper on content, and a 2 1/2 hour paper on problem solving and critical thinking skills. The exams for Math differ from American ones in that they are all short answer questions, but the questions on the second exam can be multi-part ones with as many as 10 different parts. The exams place a high expectation of the student in terms of focus, attention to detail and rigour. The exams are meant to be stressful, but the revision period is meant to provide students with the time needed to gain the confidence to do well. I have mixed feelings about these exams as the questions are really well thought out and a student who does well on the exams will be well rounded and capable in the subject. They will have a solid foundation for further work. So the exams are accurate in what they tell you about a student's abilities and they are a good indicator of future success in university.
International Baccalaureate exams follow he same concept as the IGCSE exams albeit with some differences in four key areas. First, students have to write research papers or lab reports for every subject they choose. Second, they perform community service, exercise, and creative extra-curricular activities with a certain degree of reflection and mindfulness. Third, they have to write a philosophical paper on the Theory of Knowledge to demonstrate a high degree of self awareness of one's knowledge and how it relates to the world. Fourth, they have to write a multi-disciplinary extended essay. The research papers account for 20% of the student's grade, while exams account for 80%. Diplomas are not issued unless the Theory of Knowledge, Extended Essay, and Creativity, Action, and Service (CAS) work is completed to a satisfactory standard. The exams are set up and graded in a similar fashion to that described for the IGCSE exams, but IBO gives much more guidance about how to approach student learning. There is an element of teaching to the exam, but IBO revises the subjects every five years, so there can be dramatic differences between revision cycles, which forces students and teachers to adjust the teaching and learning. The research papers they write, the community service they do, and philosophy work alleviate the reduction of education teaching to the test.
The results for the IBDP exams are published after universities have already accepted students. In order to give the applicants something to put on transcripts, IBO requires teachers to report an "Estimated Grade" in March which represents the teacher's estimate of what a student would get on the actual exam. If the actual result differs from the Estimated Grade beyond a certain amount, IBO investigates and can ban a teacher from teaching IBDP if they feel the teacher is unable to assess students properly or is unable to teach to IBO's requirements.
In both schools the stakes are more about university admissions and marketing the school rather than for the school ranking, funding, or teacher evaluation. As long as the school can trumpet the universities that have accepted the students, the graduation rate is 100%, and the cash flow matches the needs of the school, the results are icing on the cake. The one factor that can complicate this picture is the issue of handling the results of students with learning disabilities that the parents refuse to acknowledge or take measures to address. There are significant numbers of students who are forced to take these curricula when they have disabilities that the school cannot directly address, or cannot get consent to diagnose and meet those needs better. When these students struggle to obtain the unrealistic results expected by the parents, it is often less confrontational for administrators to blame the teacher than try to get the parents to face the disability. The headache management principle takes precedent, it is a smaller headache to let parents think the teacher is the issue, rather than making parents accept the disability. To be honest, getting parents to accept a disability in their child that they have been denying for 17 years is a considerably greater headache than dealing with the headache of handling teacher who is being unfairly blamed for something not entirely in his/her ability to manage...
My current school graduated the first cohort last summer and almost the whole HS staff are novice teachers of the two curricula offered. Administration does not expect high achievement from the start as they realize it takes time for teachers to become adept at teaching new curricula. In addition, the realities of hiring teachers in Beijing play a role in teacher evaluation. The difficulties of getting visas for replacement teachers in a timely fashion, combined with the internet censorship and pollution in Beijing, mean that teacher replacement is not easy, hence the evaluation process tends to the formative; with exam results not factoring in to teacher evaluation at this time. What factors into teacher evaluation the most, is parental comments/complaints. If the comments from parents about a teacher are such that administrators are unable to do anything else but field emails/WeChat messages/phone calls relating to the teacher, the teacher will be dismissed. Headaches create dismissals. If a teacher avoids creating headaches, the teacher will likely stay even if the exam results are less than stellar.
The school in Egypt has graduated several cohorts of AP students, but is also new to the IBDP curriculum. The school also believes in a more holistic approach to teacher evaluation and does not give exam results a heavy weighting in teacher evaluation. Parents in Egypt are not so obsessed with the having their children accepted into foreign universities because parents in Egypt are reluctant to have their children study abroad (only 2,021 Egyptians studied in the USA in 2012 (Clark & AlShaikhly, 2013). Consequently the pressure on teachers for top scores is less. As long as the university acceptance rate is 100%, the consequences for the teacher from low scores is less than in China and less than it would be for American public schools. The administrators of the Egyptian school do interfere in grading and transcript results for students of influential figures in the military and intelligence communities though. When those students get poor exam results, the teacher will be dismissed or reassigned to another grade. Asides from that case, the school shares the views of the school in China that bad results are due to many small factors linked together and the interaction between student and teacher is a complex one. There are many things that need to be examined and addressed in order to improve the results for the future, so they will not generally look at results alone when evaluating teachers.
Accreditation visits from outside agencies factor into how the schools regard high stakes testing. Both schools have to pass accreditation visits from the International Baccalaureate Organization and Advanced Ed for Egypt and WASC for the Chinese school. The AdvancedEd and WASC visits can affect the validity of a school's diploma as invalid diplomas mean universities won't accept students. Failing an IBO curriculum review visit also fatally affects students prospects for university admissions. In all these reviews, exam results do play a role in evaluating the school but they are combined with data about processes and other factors. These schools will be more conscious of exam results when accreditation visits are pending, but I have not seen any teachers dismissed or otherwise dealt with as a result of such visits. Teachers may receive verbal or written reprimands department heads may step down, but there is no dismissal of teachers to date.
Exam results are not featured in the reports for IGCSE and IBDP as they are published after the end of G10 and G12 respectively. Parents receive a separate report from the school which follows a template from Cambridge International Examinations or IBO. While students are working on the curricula, the reports for both schools are electronically generated via Managebac, the school management platform developed for IBO schools. The grades are on a seven point scale with no half marks. Teachers write detailed feedback about student progress. The Chinese school has four character traits that are also included in the report for rigor, respect, relationships and responsibility. These traits are on a four-point scale. Managebac allows teachers to write grades different from the totals calculated in the gradebook because IBO requires an open policy with respect to handing in assignments, so the gradebook may be low due to work not submitted. The grade is listed at the top of the reports for both schools, but most of the visual space is taken up by the teacher comments and the bar graphs that show students progress in the areas/assignments assessed by the teacher. IGCSE grades are from A* to G with a U for ungradeable work that was written in pencil or otherwise unreadable. The grade boundaries differ substantially from the standard North American A-F scale and a correction is applied to convert the grades to the North American scale.
I am mixed about the use of such original National exams and the Lite versions seen in international schools. While the lite versions are less stressful for the students when they are taking the exams, the stress of juggling the deadlines for 5 different research papers, the extended essay, the Theory of Knowledge essay, and the CAS requirements really take a toll on students. The IBDP students do look on the national exam students with envy as they just sit memorizing facts and solving problems. The juggling of deadlines and stress of writing so many papers seems like torture in comparison.
IGCSE exams are quite stressful for Chinese students who have recently come from the Public system of education as there are a lot of situations that the students aren't familiar with, and the chances of misunderstanding things are great. Both exams serve a purpose in that many universities with large applicant pools need a quick metric to efficiently filter applicants. One can argue about how fair that is, but I also think these exams prepare students for some of the more stressful situations in life where one has to deal with a complex problem in a set amount of time. I also think that they make consistent teaching easier than Project-based learning or portfolio work. Again whether one thinks that is good or not depends on whether one believes that education is for molding a society or molding an individual. I don't mind teaching to an exam if it is a well constructed one like the IGCSE math ones. There are many situations in the exam taken from real life without being watered down, and I find it useful to put teenagers under pressure in an exam as it helps them see that the way they see themselves is often inaccurate and it allows one to have a conversation about improving processes of reparation and execution which are higher order thinking skills. While the knowledge assessed on an exam may not be that high in terms of Bloom's Taxonomy, the progress in developing awareness and higher order thinking skills when discussing how to prepare and perform well does have benefit and should not be omitted from the discussion about exam results.
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