I believe that the US is nearly unique in not having national assessments. Certainly in both the UK and Israel most exams with some impact on your future life are externally marked, and those few that are not are audited. From my perspective the US system seems batshit insane, I’d be interested in what a steelman of “have teachers arbitrarily grade the kids then use that to decide life outcomes” could be?
Another huge difference between the education system in the US and elsewhere is the undergraduate/postgraduate distinction. Pretty much everywhere else an undergraduate degree is focused in a specific field, and meant to teach you sufficiently well to immediately get a job in that field. When 3 years isn’t enough for that the length of the degree is increased by a year or 2 and you come out with a masters or a doctorate at the end. For example my wife took a 4 year course and now has a master’s in pharmacy, allowing her to work as a pharmacist. Friends took a 5 or 6 year course (depending on the university) and are not Doctors. Second degrees are pretty much only necessary if you want to go into academia or research.
Meanwhile in the US it seems that all an undergraduate degree means is you took enough courses in anything you want to get a certificate, and then have to go to a postgraduate course to actually learn stuff that’s relevant to your particular career. 8 years total seems like standard to become a doctor in the US, yet graduate doctors actually have a year or 2 less medical training than doctors in the UK. This seems like a total dead weight loss.
I’d be interested in what a steelman of “have teachers arbitrarily grade the kids then use that to decide life outcomes” could be?
The best argument I have thought of is that America loves liberty and hates centralized control. They want to give individual states, districts, schools, teachers the most power they can have as that is a central part of America’s philosophy. Also anecdotally, some teachers have said that they hate standardized tests because they have to teach to it. And I hate being taught to for the test (like APs for example). It’s much more interesting where the teacher is teaching something they find interesting and enjoy (and thus can choose to assess on).
However, this probably does not outweigh the downsides and is probably a bad approach overall.
The way the auditing works in the UK is as follows:
Students will be given an assignment, with a strict grading rubric. This grading rubric is open, and students are allowed to read it. The rubric will detail exactly what needs to be done to gain each mark. Interestingly, even students who read the rubric often fail to get these marks.
Teachers then grade the coursework against the rubric. Usually two from each school are randomly selected for review. If the external grader finds the marks more than 2 points off, all of the coursework will be remarked externally.
The biggest problem with this system is that experienced teachers will carefully go over the grading rubric with their students, and explain precisely what needs to be done to gain each mark. They will then read through drafts of the coursework, and point out which marks the student is failing to get it. When they mark the final coursework they will add exactly one point to the total.
Meanwhile less experienced teachers don’t actually understand what the marking rubric means. They will pattern match the students response to the examples in the rubric, and give their students a too high mark. It will then be regraded externally and the students will end up with a far lower grade than they had expected.
Thus much of the difference in grades between schools is explainable by the difference in teacher quality/experience. This is bad for courses which are mostly graded in coursework, but fortunately most academic subjects are 90% written exams.
I believe that the US is nearly unique in not having national assessments. Certainly in both the UK and Israel most exams with some impact on your future life are externally marked, and those few that are not are audited. From my perspective the US system seems batshit insane, I’d be interested in what a steelman of “have teachers arbitrarily grade the kids then use that to decide life outcomes” could be?
Another huge difference between the education system in the US and elsewhere is the undergraduate/postgraduate distinction. Pretty much everywhere else an undergraduate degree is focused in a specific field, and meant to teach you sufficiently well to immediately get a job in that field. When 3 years isn’t enough for that the length of the degree is increased by a year or 2 and you come out with a masters or a doctorate at the end. For example my wife took a 4 year course and now has a master’s in pharmacy, allowing her to work as a pharmacist. Friends took a 5 or 6 year course (depending on the university) and are not Doctors. Second degrees are pretty much only necessary if you want to go into academia or research.
Meanwhile in the US it seems that all an undergraduate degree means is you took enough courses in anything you want to get a certificate, and then have to go to a postgraduate course to actually learn stuff that’s relevant to your particular career. 8 years total seems like standard to become a doctor in the US, yet graduate doctors actually have a year or 2 less medical training than doctors in the UK. This seems like a total dead weight loss.
The best argument I have thought of is that America loves liberty and hates centralized control. They want to give individual states, districts, schools, teachers the most power they can have as that is a central part of America’s philosophy. Also anecdotally, some teachers have said that they hate standardized tests because they have to teach to it. And I hate being taught to for the test (like APs for example). It’s much more interesting where the teacher is teaching something they find interesting and enjoy (and thus can choose to assess on).
However, this probably does not outweigh the downsides and is probably a bad approach overall.
The way the auditing works in the UK is as follows:
Students will be given an assignment, with a strict grading rubric. This grading rubric is open, and students are allowed to read it. The rubric will detail exactly what needs to be done to gain each mark. Interestingly, even students who read the rubric often fail to get these marks.
Teachers then grade the coursework against the rubric. Usually two from each school are randomly selected for review. If the external grader finds the marks more than 2 points off, all of the coursework will be remarked externally.
The biggest problem with this system is that experienced teachers will carefully go over the grading rubric with their students, and explain precisely what needs to be done to gain each mark. They will then read through drafts of the coursework, and point out which marks the student is failing to get it. When they mark the final coursework they will add exactly one point to the total.
Meanwhile less experienced teachers don’t actually understand what the marking rubric means. They will pattern match the students response to the examples in the rubric, and give their students a too high mark. It will then be regraded externally and the students will end up with a far lower grade than they had expected.
Thus much of the difference in grades between schools is explainable by the difference in teacher quality/experience. This is bad for courses which are mostly graded in coursework, but fortunately most academic subjects are 90% written exams.