An Interview with Dr. Yong Zhao on the potential risk of relying too heavily on MEAP scores
Dr. Yong Zhao is the University Distinguished Professor of the College of Education, the Director of the Center of Technology and Teaching, the Director of the US-China Center for Research on Educational Excellence, and the Executive Director of the Confucius Institute.
by Rob Huisingh
Announcer: Welcome to Inside Michigan Education. A weekly show featuring interviews with community leaders, school administrators, school business officials and individuals who are passionate about the future of Michigan Education. And now, here is your host for Inside Michigan Education, Rob Huisingh.
Rob Huisingh: Welcome to Inside Michigan Education. This week, we are recording direct from the Michigan State Campus and we are joined by Dr. Yong Zhao. Dr. Yong Zhao is the University Distinguished Professor of the College of Education. He is the Director of the Center of Technology and Teaching, the Director of the US-China Center for Research on Educational Excellence, and he is also the Executive Director of the Confucius Institute. Dr. Zhao, it is a pleasure to have you on our show.
Dr. Yong Zhao: It is my pleasure too.
Rob Huisingh: Dr. Zhao, one of the topics that I heard you talk about recently and which I thought would be of interest to our listeners is this process of perhaps looking at the movement that we are on at present towards MEAP scores, towards testing and testable requirements and results and that there might be some danger in that and I thought you would just fill us in.
Dr. Yong Zhao Well, Rob as you are aware, I think right now many schools are under pressure to meet the requirements of the Federal No Child Left Behind Law, which I think uses accountability as a reason to put schools towards more standardized testing and in essence what happens is that schools and students and teachers and school leaders are judged by whether or how much they meet the student test scores in specifically I think a few very narrowing subjects like reading, like math and which I think is a mistake for preparing students to enter a much globalized economy.
What happens that in schools right now -- after five years of No Child Left Behind, everybody has noticed in the media is that it in essence has forced many schools, especially elementary schools to cut our other content like creative writing, art, music even some physical education courses. And this action is going to be counter productive because as you look to the future that the economy is further globalized due to advancement of technology and communication, information, transportation. The world has become much more interconnected and interdependent, and in that case that is our student, whether they are in Michigan or Illinois or Ohio our students will have to become global citizens. That is they will have to interact, compete, collaborate with their peers from other countries.
Now, if we think education as a business of preparing for the future and the future for most of our children would be, let us say 15, 20 years later, and at that time as you can imagine from what happened in the last 20 years, all our business have become global enterprises. Today, it is very hard to buy a product that is local. It is very hard to find a company that only employees local people, and so our students will have to in many ways be, if they want to compete, they have to be better to find some niche talents that other counties cannot do. I mean just a simple example, even our students in Michigan does as well or even better in mathematics or science or engineering, but consider that the Chinese, the Indians, well you can take the Irish, the English, if they did the same way in math and science, then the jobs will be shifted probably to India or China because their labor is cheaper, if you have the same talents.
So, it is cost (ph) for us to say, okay, we have to find our niche, what are niches, what our students can do, and the US has traditionally been excelling in creativity that means if you look at today's economy, the information age, a lot of our new technology were actually, in fact invented in the US, and we have more patents than any other countries so far, and that comes from a level of creativity, which many other countries, even like countries we admire in terms of the test score, Singapore, Japan, Korea and China, they all want creativity. They are actually reforming their schools in an opposite direction. They want to relax; they want more flexibility for students, for schools and they want to expand the definition of success to include the ability in other areas as music, as arts.
Another example, if you look now in the niche talents, the economy has changed; design, the ability to design has changed, that is we need lot of designers. I mean, and Rob your communication business, how to design web pages to communicate? Most schools have ignored those talents, those children because they like to draw, like to paint, like to think graphically, but because they may not be as good in math or verbal skills, therefore, they were deemed as 'at risk' students, but now actually those students maybe making more money, maybe more in demand. I mean seriously how many bad websites have you seen, how many bad PowerPoints have you seen. That's just a simple example, once they know in terms of design, why iPod was the really the first success for MP3 players, because they had a better design. We are looking for designs.
So, those talents change a lot and our school by chasing after test scores in a few limited subjects is definitely getting us to the wrong direction.
Rob Huisingh: It's fascinating because almost with the advent of "No Child Left Behind," there seems to be a focus on achieving a general level of success across the board and we are almost it would seem loosing sight of what do we do in order to actually excel in that loss of creativity seems profound.
Dr. Yong Zhao: The spirit, I mean at least the philosophical spirit of "No Child Left Behind" is correct in the sense that we cannot afford to leave children from disadvantaged backgrounds to be behind in the terms of academic achievement, but the problem really lies is that can we drive educational policy because of certain socio-economical reasons. I mean seriously a lot of these children who don't achieve as well in scores maybe are caused by economic or social status where they are born, and that's much more a social problem than educational problem. However, we take that problem into education then we bring out other educational practices, policies to fit this need. We are forcing those schools who could excel and back to, again, the measurement of reading of math and to a very low level. It is actually not helping those disadvantaged communities either because as we are seeing that, in the future the abilities in foreign languages, the knowledge of other countries, their ability to work and interact with people from other cultures, might actually give them a better advantage than simple math or reading.
However, now we are holding their scores, the scores who might need the most in terms of international discourse are back from engaging in those discourses. And we are forcing those children; you know the children who suffer more are those scores we claim we are trying to help actually because they cannot meet the math or reading requirement of AO (ph), AYP or other "No Child Left Behind" requirements, therefore, they cannot engage in other more interesting and possibly more useful education activities. That's actually the biggest challenge and also as we mentioned about creativity, creativity really is a naturally born ability. Everybody has that ability. However, the matter is that do we want to support it, and schools cannot necessarily teach you how to be creative, because we are naturally creative, but schools can stop you from being creative because by forcing you to rote memorization, to force you to learn things you are interested in and then naturally you will loose the interest.
Creativity comes from really a strong interest, a burning desire to be engaged in something and thorough those engagements you will learn, you will find out. Now, we know everybody is different and talented like you may be good in music, you may be good in sports, I may be good in something else, but if we are asked to forget all our own interests, instead to pursue something that's defined by Washington DC or defined by (Inaudible) do we think that's important and that's going to give us a lot of trouble.
So, I am hoping that the fact of the local control of scoring the tradition in the US gives more diversity in how we treat different talents, how we value different talents in different communities.
Rob Huisingh: Is there anything, I keep thinking about, I was in a Board meeting and I listened to a Principal and she was talking about an elementary school and that it had achieved the results in MEAP. She was happy, and that they had achieved good results, but she was lamenting the fact that it was coming at the expense of creative writing or fictional reading and what can we as a state do to try to add an activist level or differently what can we do to try and change this?
Dr. Yong Zhao: Well, I think Rob we are doing exactly what we should be doing that is we should get the voice out. We should offer alternatives and I believe the politicians in (Inaudible), in Washington DC, they are all truly having the best interest of our children in their mind, but I think they are just not well informed of other possibilities. For example, they understand other countries. I think in the media right now, we only talk about how China, India prepares more engineers, how Singaporeans, how Koreans score better in international tests, but we didn't talk about the fact that these countries are trying to imitate the US education system and that we need to ask why? Why they are dumping what we think is so valuable? So, that information is to be known and also as we are not informed of opportunities of the future. We kept being bombarded or overwhelmed by problems of the past; that is we look at our test scores, they are low, but we somehow think that's important.
As you know, as an adult, as a successful person, you will realize that a test score, a fourth grade does not predict your future, does not predict your contribution to the society, but why do we pay so much attention to it, which I think at the activist level we just need to get the word out, we need to educate the public, we need to inform. We need to up bring those things to have a more careful understanding on what education means, of what other countries are doing as policy makers, as educators, as education leaders. We need to be much more aware of what's happening in other education systems, what's happening in other countries, what's the nature of globalization, what new skills and knowledge will be required in the digital age and the international age.
Rob Huisingh: Well Dr. Zhao, it has been a pleasure to have you on our show and there are a lot more interesting topics that I would like to talk to you about in future shows. So, I hope you will join us again sometime.
Dr. Yong Zhao: Thank you Rob.
Rob Huisingh: For more information about Dr. Zhao and his work at MSU, I invite you to visit his website at www.zhao.educ.msu.edu or you may contact his administrative assistant by telephone at (517) 432-4649. Until next week, this is Rob Huisingh with Inside Michigan Education.
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