I can only speak from my own experience as a preschool teacher that the Ages and Stages Questionnaires are extremely helpful to us. We use them as an assessment tool every fall and spring to track our students' progress over time. We are able to see which skills they excel at and which skills we can help them acquire. If "Johnny" is skilled at gross motor activities and not so much with fine motor, and "Abby" is exactly the opposite, we can pair them up to help each other, thus refining leadership skills as well. This also builds their self esteem. It also aids teachers in verifying which children need help with speech and other skills.
I know there is a debate as to whether or not we should IQ test children. I also know that many feel the tests are not fair. It is very difficult to "take sides" on this issue because I can see and understand both viewpoints. In CT, third grade students take the CMT's. I feel there is much added stress on teachers to "teach to the test." School funding and teacher evaluations are also dependent upon these scores. I don't exactly know how to measure what and how children learn at the elementary school level, but I feel the CMT's and the whole No Child Left Behind Act have been more detrimental than helpful. Much of what the government mandates they do not fund.
Assessment reform in China:
A respond to the international trend in the new
century
Professor
Gao LingbiaoSouth China Normal University
Introduction
China has the world’s largest education system. According to the 2003
statistics on school and university enrolment from the Ministry of Education
(MOE) in China, there are 247,365,300 children
and young people in kindergarten, schools and universities. Each of the school levels in China are the size of the full population of many
countries. The following are the 2003 statistics from the MOE official website
[1].
Table 1 Number of students at
different level of education in China (MOE, 2004)
Total number of students
New enrolment
Kindergarten
20,040,000
Primary School
116,897,400
18,293,900
Junior Secondary
School
66,908,300
22,201,300
Senior Secondary
School
32,434,000
12,678,800
Tertiary Institution
11,085,600
3,821,700
This makes reform particularly difficult despite the centralized
education system. This educational system was reorganized first in 1984 and then
in 1993 and the Ministry of Education was renamed the State Education
Commission. However the name Ministry of Education in Beijing remains. According
to Wang (1994) with the implementation of universal 9 years of compulsory
education, the improvement of educational quality and standards became a new
focus of attention in China. The national monitoring system
was just taking shape in the 1980s. Assessment was seen to serve the development
of moral, intellectual and physical ability. Public examinations at primary
level were cancelled. In the government document
[2], school based
assessment was re-emphasized and encouraged to play an important role in
controlling and improving the quality of student learning. However, schools and
local authorities did not follow this policy until the recent
reform.
In order to better understand the assessment policy implementation
issues, a closer look will be taken at Guangzhou,
a city in one of the provinces of China, to see the steps China has made
towards reforming the assessment system in recent years. The ongoing processes
of globalization have had significant implications for functional and
territorial organization and reorganization of human activities in different
world regions. China too is moving to reform
curriculum and assessment. (Lin, 2003)
The flexible global movement of people and capital has influenced
China with more people becoming
globally aware. With the advent of technology, more people in
China are beginning to see the
benefits that might be accrued from working from an international perspective.
China has opened its doors more to
the world and is moving in the same direction as many countries throughout the
world in order to reform its curriculum and assessment systems. The sheer
numbers have inhibited the developments in China; however
they will learn quickly and adapt to make assessment more humanistic and
learner-centred as seen in other countries.
Examinations for entrance to higher education and higher-level
technical training have served primarily to control access to severely limited
resources, already strained by a shortage of well-prepared teachers, inadequate
buildings and equipment and out of date libraries. In the current drive to
modernize the Chinese economy, the pendulum of Chinese higher education
admission policy has once again swung to an extreme position. According to
Zhangand
Zhong (2003), Chinese reform has expanded since 1989.
Chinese society has gradually turned its attention to building the
socialist market economy. In this context, unprecedented vigour emerges out of
education reform. Curriculum reform in elementary and secondary schools has been
spreading particularly in Shanghai and several other regions. This is the
macro context under which assessment policy is being developed in
China.
Policy Development/Political events
Education reform has been traditionally “top down” in China.
Almost all the policies come from the Ministry of Education (MOE) in Beijing. In the past,
these policies were very detailed and prescriptive. With the introduction of
decentralization in educational policy making, the central government wished to
“change the over centralization in curriculum management. School curriculum …
under the control at national, local and school levels to fit in with the
conditions of students, schools and regions” (MOE, 2001, Line no. 2).
National policies became more general. They provided educators with big ideas,
concepts and principles for reform, targets and standards for school curriculum.
In this environment, the provincial Department of Education and city/regional
Bureau of Education were responsible for developing the local policies. Since
the whole country must follow the national policies, the local policies relate
to practical rules and strategies, interpretations of ideas and concepts in the
central policies, and the regional targets of the reform. At the city/regional
level, the district/county Offices of Education do not create new policies or
strategies or rules, but they can play a role in the process by developing
approaches to implement these reform directives that come from the centre. This
decentralized approach to education policy making is summarised in Figure
1.
Insert “Figure 1 Policy process in China” about here
The acting agent of curriculum and assessment reform under the MOE is
the “National Centre for School Curriculum and Textbook Development”. There are
also a number of “Centre(s) of Curriculum Studies in Basic Education” located in
universities. For example, the Beijing
Normal University, East China
Normal University, South China
Normal University, etc., are all associated with
the MOE and assist in the development of the central policies. Under the MOE
centres there are also local branches named “Research Section of Instructions
and Learning” (
RSIL) in all levels of educational authorities. Their tasks are
mainly related to the development of local policies, while they also assist in
the development of central policies on curriculum and assessment. However, the
RSIL can only define reforms within the basic education system. This means, in
terms of assessment reform, they can only develop policies for within-school
tests and examinations and for some public examinations, mainly for the senior
secondary entrance and school certification examinations. The most important
public examination in China – the university entrance
examination is under the charge of another agent under the MOE, the “National
Education Examinations Authority”. There are also local authorities of
educational examinations to conduct locally the university entrance examination.
This examination used to be unified over the whole country but now, under the
decentralization policy, it has become a provincial-unified public examination.
In summary, the curriculum and evaluation reform originated in two agencies and
spread out in two different paths: one was responded for curriculum development
and implementation, including the within school assessments; another was
responsible to public examination (see figure 2). This, in many times, caused
troubles due to the differences ideas and strategies of these two
agencies.
Insert “Figure 2 Acting agents of curriculum and assessment reform” about here
Assessment Reform Issues: Problem identification and the national
response
Assessment reform in Guangzhou,
therefore, had its origins in national curriculum reforms initiated by the
Chinese government in response to the challenges facing China
in the twenty-first century. Resetting the aims of education to meet the needs
of the new century and changing the traditional ways of cultivating future
citizens was seen as one of the urgent tasks for Chinese educators. In 1998, a
group of about 30 expects from the National Centre for School Curriculum and
Textbook Development, University Centres of Curriculum Studies and local
Research Sections of Instruction and Learning started to prepare the documents
for the reform and these were issued by the Minister of Education in 2001 as the
Guide Lines for Curriculum Reform in Basic
Education (experimental draft). A team of more than 300 experts
from the above agencies then started to develop the National Curriculum Standards for Compulsory
Education (experimental draft) and the National Curriculum Standards for General
Senior Secondary Schools (experimental draft), which were published in 2002
and 2003 respectively.
The new national curriculum changed the objectives of school
curriculum from focusing only on knowledge delivery to a wider perspective of
student development in three dimensions: knowledge and skills, process and
methods, and, emotion, attitude and value. Integrated courses such as science,
history and social science, practical learning were introduced. The traditional
structure of senior secondary curriculum was reorganized into a three-order
structure: at the top were 8 learning fields: language and literature,
mathematics, science, technology, social science, health and physical education,
aesthetic education, and practical learning. Each learning field cover a number
of subjects, for example, two subjects, Chinese and foreign language, were under
the umbrella learning field “language and literature”; three subjects, physics,
chemistry and biology were under the learning field “science”. Each subject
included a number of modules which formed the fundamental cell of the senior
secondary curriculum. Some of the modules were obligatory; others were optional,
while in primary and junior secondary level all courses were still obligatory.
(See figure 3).
Insert “Figure 3 Structure of the senior secondary
curriculum” about here
The importance of traditional subject knowledge was still taken into
account in the new curriculum; however, more attentions were placed to student
real life knowledge and capacities in solving practical problems. Teachers were
encouraged to make their class more interactive and problem solving related to
promote student learning in a more active and enquiry way. The concept of
evaluation changed from valuing only student achievement of learning into
valuing both the results as well as process of learning. Educators and teachers
were invited to develop new approaches and techniques for assessment to liberate
students from the heavy pressure of examination.
Test and Examination Reform Efforts
Before the curriculum reform, it was the case that, for almost all
teachers, principals and government officers throughout China,
student evaluation or assessment was simply viewed as examinations and tests
(
Gao, 2002). Students needed to pass numerous after-class-tests, module tests,
mid-term tests, term tests, year tests, graduation tests and two important
public examinations: the senior secondary entrance exams and university entrance
exams during his/her school years. All the mid-term tests, term tests and year
tests were organized externally and students were ranked according to their
scores in these tests beginning in their first year of primary schooling.
Students’ scores in these tests also affected their teachers’ income – in almost
all schools, the distribution of a bonus (a part of teachers’ incomes in
China) among teachers was based on
their students’ achievement in tests and examinations. Parents and the society
also valued the exam scores and took it as the most important measure of the
quality of a school. This pushed teachers and students into an exam-orientated
style of teaching and learning (
Liu, 1995). Tests and examinations were viewed
as “a baton conducting teachers, students and the teaching-learning
process” (
Gao & Watkins, 2001). However, these examinations focused only
on the quantitative aspect of student learning outcomes, used surface exam
techniques, mostly, pen-and-paper tests which only measured the quantity of
knowledge and lower level objectives of learning (
Gao, 2003). The quality of,
and approaches to, learning as well as attitude and value of students towards
learning were neglected. Evaluation, in this way, became an obstacle to the
improvement of the quality of teaching and learning as well as school curriculum
in the past decades. With the adoption of the new national curriculum, reform of
student assessment became urgent (
Gao, 2002).
Because student assessment in China has been heavily externalized and
competitive, over emphasising quantitative outcomes and uniform standards, and
did not take into account the diversity of students and, neglected the right and role of students, the
MOE decided to change student assessment towards more
“diversification/loosening”, similar to the direction of assessment reform in
Korea and Japan (Lee, 2000). This movement was described in the Guide Lines for Curriculum Reform in Basic
Education (experimental draft) (MOE, 2001), which was the key to
assessment reform. It described the reconstruction of a so-called “developmental assessment system” that
“focuses on all aspects of learning, uses variety of techniques, and pays
more attention to how students progressing their learning (MOE,
2003a)”. The guidelines
also state that with the new assessment strategy we need to:
“Build up a new evaluation system aimed at facilitating students’
whole development. It will not only assess students’ achievement, but also
discover and develop students’ potential in various ways, identify their needs
in development, help them to develop their self-understanding and
self-confidences. Evaluation needs to play its role in educating and facilitate
students’ development.” (MOE, 2001, Guide Line no.14)
Assessment Quality
In a later government document on the reform of school evaluation and
assessment (MOE, 2002), student assessment was divided into two parts: the first
part was called “assessment of general quality in learning” and focused on
assessing students’ development in a) moral performance, b) civil awareness, c)
learning aptitude, d) ability in communication and cooperation, e) physical
wellbeing, f) aesthetic literacy. The results of assessment were to be reported
by qualitative descriptions and rating grades. The second part focused on the
assessment of students’ achievement in: a) knowledge and skills, b) methods and
process, c) emotion, attitude and value. The MOE adopted a flexible stance and
encouraged schools to set up their own objectives considering both the National
Curriculum Standards and the conditions of schools and students. Teachers were encouraged to assess students’ achievement
in a dynamic and interactive way through “pen-and-paper tests,
operational tests, teacher observation, teacher-student interaction, student
demonstrations, student self-evaluation and peer-evaluation (MOE,
2003a)”. Qualitative
techniques, especially a learning portfolio were identified as a critical and
essential element of student achievement assessment
system.
Stop Ranking: Rate
A rating scale such as “excellent, good, medium, pass and fail” was
recommended to grade students’ achievement instead of the popular percentage
marking scale. This is because the rating scale can give a truer description of
the learning quality of students. And, more importantly, the MOE wished to
lighten the very serious atmosphere of competition shrouding schools. Ranking of
primary and junior secondary students according to their scores or grades in
tests and exams was prohibited by the central government for years (MOE, 2000);
however, it continued to occur in many schools. The MOE re-emphasised this
no-ranking policy in the new reform and tried to create more difficulties for
schools to rank, thinking that they would finally stop ranking students by the
using the rating scale. Ranking of schools, teachers and students in public
examinations was also prohibited. This used to be a hot topic of the local
authority, the mass media, the parents and all of the society and caused a
powerful push to schools and teachers onto the exam-orientated
teaching.
Reduce Frequency
Reducing the frequency of within-school tests and public examinations
was another MOE policy of assessment reform. Primary graduation examination used
to be a local public examination but is now changed to a school-based exam
(2002). The junior secondary graduation examination and the senior secondary
entrance examination used to be separate. The later was an important public
examination at provincial level. The new policy combined these two into a
city/regional level public examination. The senior school certificate
examination used to be compulsory and unified at provincial level. Now it has
been changed to a selectable public examination. The city bureaus of education
could decide whether or not to continue this examination. Moreover, the MOE
emphasised the criterion reference character of this exam to lighten the
competitive atmosphere and “to depress students from heavy learning loads
(MOE, 2001)”.
The new policy also called for changes in pen-and-paper tests in that
they should:
² Focus on assessing students’ abilities in understanding, analyzing
and problem solving;
² Relate closely to students’ daily experience and the
society;
² Use more open-ended items rather than multiple choice and closed
items; and
² Adopt open-book tests if possible. (2003b)
In summary, the MOE tried to promote changes in student assessment
from measuring only knowledge and cognitive skills to all-round aspects of
intelligence and development; from neglecting the diversity of student
characteristics and orientations to taking all these into account; from dealing
with students as only passive objects to encouraging them to play a more active
roles; from very centralized control and competitive atmosphere to less
centralized and more relaxed atmosphere. The new policies, among other
things:
a) Introduced a new assessment of “general learning
quality”;
b) Emphasised the concept and technique of process
assessment;
c) Used rating grades as a substitution of the percentage marks in
assessment;
d) Improved the techniques and renewed the contents of pen-and-paper
tests;
e) Decreased the frequency and intensity of public examinations;
and
f) Stopped ranking students, teachers and schools based on test and
exam results.
Handing off the biggest Problem – the university entrance
examination
However, the reform of the national unified university entrance
examination remains a problem unsolved. This is the most important, high-stake
and competitive public examination in China. It used to be very difficult
and competitive and pushed most of the schools to spend up to one year in
drilling students with the exam type items. It affected school teaching and
learning as well as assessment in all levels and all aspects (Gao, 2003). The
MOE policy of this reform is:
“The university entrance examination and admission system should
reform to keep pace with the school curriculum reform. It should follow the
principle that this examination must be advantageous to the selection of
university candidates, to the implementation of quality orientated education
and, to the right of universities in making decision independently. The contents
of examination should weight on assessing the ability and quality of students,
and reconstruct a new system including qualitative evaluation. Students could
have more than one chance to take the examination in this new system and, both
universities and students could have their choice.” (MOE, 2001; Guideline
no. 15)
The MOE made the decision that the national unified examination was
going to become a provincial public examination. Each province department of
education must develop its own strategies and approaches for this examination.
Thus the MOE ‘passed the ball’ to the local educational authorities who
have yet to really solve the problem.
Policy strategies at the local level
To better understand how the assessment policy works in
China one needs to look at how it is
played out at a local rather than at the national level. The following
discussion will include a review of Guangzhou, a
city in Guangdong
Province, where officials
are attempting to implement the policies called for at the national
level.
Guangdong Provincial strategies
Considering that there are great differences between different cities
of Guangdong
in economic and educational development, the provincial department produced only
the rules of public examinations and left others, including the interpretation
of the central policy and strategies for school based tests to the city
authority.
The senior secondary school certificate examination was cancelled.
The senior secondary school entrance examination was combined with the junior
secondary graduation examination and organized by the city bureau of education
under the MOE policy. Students’ performances on this examination were rated in a
five-point scale. A student’s final grade was to consist of two parts: 90
percent of the contribution came from the examination and 10 percent came from
the result of assessment in general qualities of learning. All public
examinations were closed book tests except the oral examination in a foreign
language.
However, there was trouble in proposing the scheme of reform in
university entrance examination. Since there are millions of examinees (7.23
million in China and 0.53
million in Guangdong in 2004
[3]), this examination
becomes important and attracts attention from the whole of the Chinese society.
People in China believed that the present
closed book pen-and-paper test format was an effective and reliable method of
selection and, more importantly, it was a good method for maintaining social
fairness and avoiding corruption. This made local government officers become
very conservative in dealing with this issue since they worried that any
improper change in university entrance examination might cause social
turbulence. In addition, the local officers who used to keep up with the top
education officers for their own security, under the tradition of a very
centralized society, still wished to follow the central policy or at least get
some advice and support from the Centre. However, the active agent in the
central government, the National Education Examinations Authority, seemed not to
be so enthusiastic in the curriculum reform and its related assessment reform.
It was relatively silent. By now, almost all the policy was coming from another
agent – the National Centre for School Curriculum and Textbook Development and
its associated agents. However, this agency was not responsible for the reform
of university entrance examination and as a result, officers in provincial
centres of educational examination seemed to loose their direction. All four
experimental provinces (including Guangdong) in senior secondary curriculum
reform had not yet presented their schemes of the reform in university entrance
examination, though they were expected to have been published before September,
2004.
Policy proposals and Decisions of Guangzhou CBOE
[4]Assessment reform in Guangzhou is
rooted in two lines from the central government in Beijing. One is the
National Centre for School Curriculum and Textbook Development and its
associated agents. They are active in developing policies for the reform of
within-school assessments and public examinations during that stage of
schooling. They have attempted to change school assessment to a learning
facilitating and student friendly approach with diversity, process-focused and
school based direction. Another line starts from the National Education
Examination Authority. Only a faint image of the reform of university entrance
examination has been presented since then. Under these circumstances, assessment
reform in Guangzhou referred only to within-school
assessments and the senior secondary entrance examinations and carefully kept
balance between these two lines.
The Guangzhou city bureaus of education (CBOE)
decided to construct a “network of school assessment and quality control”. It
was declared that this network aimed at: a) implementing the new national
curriculum and achieving the national standards; b) improving the quality of
basic education; c) improving the efficiency of school management; and d)
promoting further reform in student assessment (GZRSIL
[5],
2003).
In the Scheme of School Assessment and Quality
Control, the
city bureau defined that “all assessments that routinely happened within school
are developmental evaluation
[6]”, and “variety of
evaluation techniques including pen-and-paper tests, tests on experimental
skills or computer operational skills, oral exam, reports, classroom
observations, descriptions of learning process, interviews, analysis of student
homework, performance in learning tasks, learning portfolio, etc. were
encouraged” under this concept (GZRSIL, 2003, p.2). This interpretation might
lead to misunderstanding and confusion in practice as will be discussed
later.
Following the central policies, the CBOE of Guangzhou decided
(GZRSIL, 2003):
a) Rating grades will be used in all within-school tests in primary
and junior level.
b) Assessment of students’ “general quality in learning” needed to be
recorded at the end of each term.
c) All schools needed to apply the processing and qualitative
evaluation techniques in their within school assessment.
d) All techniques which might lead to the improvement of
pen-and-paper tests were encouraged. Those included the use of open-ended items
and open-book tests.
The CBOE of Guangzhou also emphasised the importance of external
examinations. Even though the central policy was that all within school tests
should be developed in schools, it was decided that “both schools and the
district office of education could be the subject body of the mid-term and term
tests” (GZRSIL, 2003, p.2). This actually encouraged or required all the
district offices of education in Guangzhou to organise or be involved in the
external mid-term and term tests. Besides that, external sampling tests were
organised for each subject at every stage of schooling. This meant that students
need to take external sampling tests every three year (primary year 1 to 3, 4 to
6, and junior secondary) in all subjects. This examination was to be conducted
at school, district and city level. All the districts and schools were required
to report the pattern of student distribution according to their marks in this
examination.
A list of important teaching objectives and content were also
included in the Scheme of School Assessment and Quality Control which
described the emphasis that Guangzhou CBOE placed on national curriculum
standards and student assessment.
Discussion
Assessment reform in Guangzhou had its
origins in China’s national
curriculum reform that was responding to the challenges facing
China in the twenty-first century. It
was also a result of serious criticisms that started from mid 1990s of education
assessment which was in turn identified as a huge obstacle in the path of
education reform. Education reform aimed to lead to a more quality and
developmental orientation.
The reform promoted a process of conceptual change in student
assessment for teachers in Guangzhou. “Developmental assessment” became a
new but confusing concept for teachers and educators. As in the definition of
GZRSIL, it lead to a misunderstanding that all evaluations routinely happened in
schools could automatically facilitate student learning if a variety of
evaluating techniques were applied. With this misunderstanding, and with the
belief of most teachers that only pen-and-paper tests were reliable (Gao &
Huang, 2004), many schools did not want to decrease the frequency of
pen-and-paper tests, but added in more assessments using different techniques.
This leads to heavier teacher workload and student pressure. However,
discussions on issues such as defining the nature and roles of student
assessment, how the process of learning could be evaluated, etc., were
widespread throughout China. These discussions could have
re-conceptualized the teachers’ ideas of student assessment in a more
learning-facilitating direction. Such discussions might also have affected
people’s beliefs, especially parents’, beliefs about quality teaching and
learning and could have lead to a better environment for student learning and
assessment.
Another change related to the introduction of process and qualitative
assessment techniques. However, since these concepts and associated techniques
were imported from other countries, their appropriate implementation became a
problem for all teachers. For example, the class size of primary and junior
secondary schools in Guangzhou is about 50-60, communication between
teachers and students using portfolio assessment became difficult even though
this was quite an important feature of using portfolio assessment. Therefore a
number of pioneer teachers started to develop alternative approaches for
portfolio.
The biggest change in school practice might be the introduction of
assessment of students’ “general quality in learning” and the use of rating
grade in tests and examinations. The former extended the scope of students,
teachers and especially parents to report and record students’ all-round
development. Student self-evaluation and peer-evaluation techniques were widely
used in this field, which encouraged students to review and learn from their own
experiences of learning. This made it difficult to rank students thereby
creating a less competitive learning environment for
students.
More teachers were involved in improving test-item design techniques
because it was still true that pen-and-paper tests were still the most important
technique in assessment in most schools. Teachers were interested in developing
open-ended items and the related marking scales. The SOLO
[7]taxonomy (Biggs & Collis, 1982) was introduced to build the rating scale in
science. Another technique named PTA
[8]was introduced in marking essays in Chinese and social studies.
However, under the very strong tradition, external examinations were
still in people’s mind a fair, reliable and valid approach to assessment. This
was especially true given that the reform policy of university entrance
examination was still vague and most were waiting for clarification of new
policies, trying to keep balance between the tradition and the new orientation,
and move forward slowly and safely. … All these factors had to be the considered
by teachers and educators but tended to cause conflicts and confusion in their
minds. In practice, there was an effort not to reduce the frequency of tests and
examinations but to add new assessments. This increased teachers’ workload and
students’ pressure which in turn lead to their aversion and rejection of the
overall reform.
Conclusion
While the largest education system in the world was moving in the
direction to reform the assessment system it appeared that they had taken the
advice offered by Fullen (1991) to look at the organization “to continue to
learn as much as you can to be an agent for societal improvement”. They are
attempting to use educational assessment to determine how well students learn as
well as a means of monitoring the quest for improved education. They were using
the research on the advances in cognitive and measurement science to rethink
fundamental scientific principles and philosophical assumptions, which had
served as the foundations for approaches to assessment for centuries. They may
have understood that assessment is a more complex process than
examinations—however the policy had difficulty being implemented because there
were inadequate attempts to overcome the biggest barrier of public opinion.
As a response to external challenges, a rational planning approach to
change initiative through such things as need analysis, research and
development, strategy formation, resource support, implementation and
dissemination, and evaluation (Lueddeke, 1999) has been considered in many
schools. Such a systemic approach is helpful to decision makers in identifying
actual concerns and engaging teachers and stakeholders in implementing change
through innovative pedagogical practices. However school change is complex and
chaotic (Fullan, 1993), it “will always fail until we find some way of
developing infrastructures and processes that engage teachers in developing new
understanding, deep meaning about new approaches of teaching and learning”
(Fullan, 2001: p. 37). Apart from systemic planning, there are a number of
crucial factors, such as school vision, visionary leader, school strategy, and
government policy support which together with the innovative change, drive
school change and help to bridge external challenges and school practices.
Counties internationally are working to make education assessment
less technical and more educational. China, like many countries are trying to
use a more qualitative approach to assessment, however, due to the complexity of
the assessment as an educational issue, concepts and strategies of the Chinese
educational policy makers at both central and local seems to be confused and
conflict. However, it is clear that the implementation of this type of
assessment is now a critical education policy though there are still many
obstacles needed to overcome. Hopefully educators and teachers in China
understand the complexity and difficulty of this reform so they will go ahead
slowly and try to keep balance among many factors that affect the assessment
system. Assessment change will enhance education and assessment for 180 million
students in China as deep changes can result from
policy makers adapting a strategy of educational assessment reform.. Following
Fullen (2001) they will need to have an approach that allows the change for
assessment and curriculum to be systemic in regard to policy
implementation.
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