Why Educational Reform Is A Failure

The latest story making the rounds concerns a large "bilingual" private school in the Taichung area and how it allegedly took advantage of the regulations to lever the children of the rich into college, without real work.

A wise friend of mine once pointed out that the reason colleges do not move to a competitive entrance system where they compete against each other for the best students is that such a system would quickly become massively corrupt, given the desire of locals to graduate from the college with the best name. People would pay large sums of under-the-table cash to ensure that their kids got into National Taiwan University or National Chengkung University, a process already underway in the high schools and junior highs, where it is rumored that access to the top class may be acquired by gifts of money or by influence.

Tracking by competence in Taiwan's schools is forbidden under regulation by the Ministry of Education (MoE), though the practice is widespread, and winked at, at the junior high and high school level. The best students, likely college bound, are placed in one class and given the best teachers. Thus, when one reads of studies that say that Taiwanese students are better than other students at this or that, it is wise to take them with some skepticism, since it is generally not made public which class at the local high school was "randomly" selected to take the test (if you were the principal, which one would you pick?).

In some cases this tracking by competence makes sense -- in my daughter's elementary school the English courses are divided into two groups, the fast and slow, based on prior experience of English. This makes it easier to teach the kids, since abilities are not so disparate. But one influential parent complained and her kid, a total incompetent in English, was placed in the fast class based on her clout locally, to loud groans from her fellow students. The parents at my daughter's school demanded tracked classes in other subjects, but the school refused, citing regulations.....

In any case, the private high school in question was already famous among local foreigners due to allegations of a poisoning case in which the son of a rich and powerful man poisoned a foreign teacher over some trivial reprimand. According to the tale, the child was not punished because of the position of his father, and the teacher was told if she made a fuss problems would be made for her. The rich are different....

The latest episode involved an education reform aimed at rural areas, to offset the advantages enjoyed by urban students, called fan xing. Under the fan xing system, kids from rural areas and from small towns can enter college without taking the test -- through a simple interview, and based on their grades over the last three years.

The school is located in an area covered by the fan xing reform. In the most recent college application, it nominated 30-odd students through the system -- a clear abuse of the intent of the system if there ever was (it is a mystery why such a thing was permitted to occur in the first place). Naturally and inevitably, all were alleged to be children of the rich and powerful. Complaints were made to the MOE because many of the students were well known to be blow-offs with poor grades, and because the other parents who expected to abuse the reform didn't receive their expected benefit. The MOE showed up to investigate, and many of those nominated admitted that their grades were poor: "Damn! Didn't think I had 95 in English! I thought the teacher gave me 65." The school blamed the foreign teachers, who, it said, gave low grades which it had been forced to 'adjust' upward -- surely the first time in Taiwan history that a school complained its foreign teachers were too tough. According to news reports, further investigation uncovered the interesting coincidence that only the nominated students had their grades adjusted, hoi polloi were stuck with the low grades they actually received.

No wonder the Ministry faces so many problems....

[Taiwan]