Alex Terego

I am pleased to have received permission from Professor Yong Zhao to post his video ?No Child Left behind and Global Competitiveness,? on my site. He is yet another voice arguing for school reform.

He is the University Distinguished Professor of Education at Michigan State University, and founding director of the Center for Teaching and Technology and the US-China Center for Research on Educational Excellence. He is also a fellow of the International Academy for Education.

Zhao received his Ph.D. in Education from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1996. His research interests include diffusion of innovation, globalization and international comparative education. Zhao has published extensively in these areas.

In the video, Zhao asks whether it is sensible for American students to emulate their Asian (particularly Chinese) counterparts by adopting rigorous science and math curricula and an extended school day in order to stay ?competitive? globally. While Zhao recognizes that there are fundamental problems with American public education, he praises the culture of education in the USA, a culture that prizes ingenuity, entrepreneurship and individuality and celebrates personal expression for its own sake. He criticizes No Child Left Behind, asserting that standardized testing in a limited number of subjects as a way to measure performance is inadequate to meet the real challenges of the 21st century.

Click here to see the video

The USA is home to 17 of the top 20 universities in the world, and is also home to one of the worst performing public school systems in the developed world. Why is this? One answer is that our universities compete for tuition dollars from the students or their families. The public schools do not have to compete; they simply serve a catchment area. What if they had to compete with other schools for students? Competition keeps businesses and colleges on their toes.