What to see if the education evaluation does not look at the numbers
Our reporter Zhang Galun
Education evaluation is related to the direction of education development.
According to news from Xinhua News Agency on October 13, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council issued the "Overall Plan for Deepening Educational Evaluation Reform in the New Era" (hereinafter referred to as the "Overall Plan"), which is also the first document in New China on the systematic reform of education evaluation.
In an interview with a reporter from the Science and Technology Daily, the person in charge of the Ministry of Education stated that education evaluation reform is a worldwide, historical, and practical problem, involving multiple factors such as historical and cultural traditions, economic and social development levels, ideological concepts, and different subjects. If you move your whole body with one action, you must use the courage to overcome difficulties and the tenacity to work for a long time to carry out system design, dialectical treatment and key breakthroughs.
"This is a principle document. If you understand the reform measures of the education system over the years, you will find that many expressions in the document are familiar." Chen Zhiwen, a member of the expert group of the National Education Examination Steering Committee, told a reporter from Science and Technology Daily, "Overall The Plan has systematically integrated a number of reforms.
However, it cannot be accomplished overnight. Many specific measures still need to be explored by the main entities according to their own conditions and issued corresponding rules.
"Four Evaluations" are the most critical
The "Overall Plan" proposes 22 reform tasks from five aspects: reforming party committee and government education work evaluation, reforming school evaluation, reforming teacher evaluation, reforming student evaluation, and reforming employment evaluation.
Its basic positioning and considerations are: adhere to the principle of cultivating people by virtue, to break the "five wei" as the guidance, and to focus on the integration of policy systems, the combination of measures and institutions, and the coordinated advancement of reforms.
"There are four sentences that are the most critical." Chen Zhiwen, who participated in the development and discussion of the plan, said that it is "improving result evaluation, strengthening process evaluation, exploring value-added evaluation, and improving comprehensive evaluation."
At present, my country's education evaluation values result evaluation and emphasizes quantitative evaluation.
To put it bluntly, it means "counting".
The essence of the question of "only scores, only advancement, only diplomas, only papers, only hats" is also "counting".
Evaluate schools, use the rate of enrollment as a ruler; evaluate students, use scores to label; evaluate teachers, use essays and hats as the basis; evaluate talents, use academic qualifications to grade.
Xiong Bingqi, dean of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, pointed out that the implementation of the "four evaluations" is a fundamental strategy to break the "five wei".
Fundamentally speaking, there is a "five wei" evaluation problem, the main reason is the implementation of result evaluation.
Strengthening process evaluation means that the process of receiving education and the performance of students in the process are also included in the evaluation system.
The "Overall Plan" emphasizes the need to improve moral education evaluation, sports evaluation, aesthetic education evaluation, and labor education evaluation, as well as strict academic standards and deepening the reform of the examination and enrollment system.
The value-added evaluation, in general, is to look at the changes in the evaluation object over a period of time.
After all, students of different levels will be distributed to different schools. The evaluation of the quality of a school cannot simply look at the proportion of outstanding students. Student progress is the core evaluation indicator, which also reflects the appeal of education equity.
Not "counting", but also need to build integrity
"Break the'five only' and not'count', this is the difficulty and focus of reform." Chen Zhiwen emphasized.
It is not only a chronic disease in the education evaluation system, but also a chronic disease in the entire social evaluation system.
Specifically, the evaluation system for schools, teachers, students, and education must be reformed, and resolutely changed the simple guidance and practice of evaluating teachers based on test scores, evaluating students based on test scores, and evaluating schools based on admission rates; state agencies, institutions, State-owned enterprises should take the lead in getting rid of the orientation of only prestigious schools and only academic qualifications, and establish a moral and ability-oriented talent utilization mechanism, to give the whole society a good head and shoulder the social responsibility of educating people.
Why is it difficult to implement comprehensive evaluation?
Chen Zhiwen believes that the difficulty lies in building integrity.
If you don't "count", it seems to provide room for manipulation.
"Only scores" have always been criticized, but if you don't just look at scores, you will be accused of being unfair; "Only papers" make scientific researchers dissatisfied, but the introduction of comprehensive evaluation is worried that the evaluation of professional titles will become a relationship.
"If you don't believe it, comprehensive evaluation won't stand up." Chen Zhiwen said that to implement comprehensive evaluation, the issue of integrity must be resolved, but the issue of integrity is not just a problem within the education system.
It takes time to build a culture of integrity, and some measures can be taken to ensure the fairness and justice of the comprehensive evaluation, such as introducing a monitoring mechanism for stakeholder parties, and disclosing the names of the judges and review opinions after the review.
Of course, if we want to cure the root cause, we still have to strengthen the building of a culture of integrity, so that people do not want to cheat, dare to cheat, and cannot cheat.
To create a clean and upright environment, you must not just shout slogans, but must establish supporting punishment measures and strictly enforce them.
Only when there is a price or even a painful price for breaching integrity, can fraudsters be truly deterred.
Education evaluation must be reformed, social evaluation must also be reformed
One of the highlights of the "Overall Plan" is the proposal to reform the social employment evaluation.
Chen Zhiwen emphasized that the issue of education is actually a social issue, and educational evaluation is part of social evaluation.
The selection of people by society plays an important role in guiding students to diversify their growth and success.
The person in charge of the Ministry of Education also pointed out that some employers pay too much attention to high education and diplomas when recruiting, and some even non-prestigious schools and overseas returnees don't need them. This is a modern version of "birth theory."
Chen Zhiwen said that when appointing people, many units will delimit academic qualifications and even schools.
In some places, when recruiting and transferring students, it is clearly stipulated that only a dozen or dozens of university graduates are eligible to apply for the examination; in some units, not only the applicant's graduation school ranking, but also the level of the undergraduate school.
In order to get rid of the "diploma-only" shortcomings, establish a correct employment orientation, and positively lead the healthy development of education, the "Overall Plan" proposes five specific reform measures, such as establishing talents who are oriented by morality and ability and targeted at job requirements To use the mechanism, the recruitment of civil servants at all levels, public institutions and state-owned enterprises should reasonably formulate recruitment and examination conditions in accordance with job requirements.
Shi Zhongying, dean of the Education Research Institute of Tsinghua University, once pointed out that the long-term unresolved problems such as the "five wei" in education evaluation are directly related to the lack of awareness and inadequacy of its harmfulness inside and outside the education system.
For example, the problem of "only scores" and "only advancement" in basic education has existed for a long time. On the one hand, it shows the complexity of the problem itself; on the other hand, it also shows that government departments, all walks of life, educators and parents still only stay at Superficial and partial understanding.
They did not realize that this value orientation would harm students' health, harmony and sustainable development.
Shi Zhongying said that under this kind of understanding, it is difficult to effectively solve the problems of "only grades" and "only advancement".
"If the entire society has only academic qualifications, only diplomas, and reforms within the education system will definitely not be enough." Chen Zhiwen pointed out.
It can be seen that the "Overall Plan" puts forward relevant reform requirements for party and government agencies, institutions, and state-owned enterprises in the part of reform and employment evaluation.
It also emphasizes the need to strengthen organization and leadership by party committees and governments at all levels from the perspective of organization and implementation, put deepening education evaluation reform on the agenda, and clearly implement measures based on actual conditions.