CHAPTER 1: Introduction to Chinese and American Education: History and Current Challenges

While China’s recent economic boom has increasingly attracted the world’s attention, the educational community in the United States is paying more and more attention to China’s education. How do China’s public schools educate its millions and millions of students to be college or career ready? In what ways is Chinese education similar to, or different from, that in the United States? Why do Chinese students do so well in international academic achievement tests? Take the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) monitored by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) as an example. This large-scale test assesses the knowledge and skills of samples of 15-year-old students from 65 countries in the subject areas of reading, mathematics, and science. According to the 2009 report, students in China’s largest city, Shanghai, ranked first among all 65 countries in each subject area, whereas students in the United States ranked 17th in reading, 31st in mathematics, and 22nd in science respectively (NCES, 2010). In the 2012 PISA report, students from Shanghai in China again won first place across all three subjects (mathematics, reading, and science) while their U.S. counterparts ranked 27th in mathematics, 17th in reading, and 20th in science. In mathematics, in particular, students in Shanghai had the highest scores with a mean of 613 points, which is 119 points (nearly three years of schooling) above the average (OECD, 2014). These results send a powerful message that Chinese education is doing a good job in teaching its students’ knowledge and skills in reading, mathematics, and science.