| Ongoing changes in educational assessment policies within China and the United States have created numerous challenges in interpreting and comparing these policies because of the two very distinct contexts. On the one hand, educational assessment policies seem to be diverging, with the United States moving towards more standardized testing and China moving away from it. On the other hand, the policies and the reforms seem to converge, with both nations utilizing standardized testing as an important vehicle for educational improvement. In China, the college/university entrance examination was reinstated in 1977 after it was discontinued by the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Under unique political and economic circumstances, a series of testing policy reforms and measures were initiated and implemented in the 1980s, in order to correct the tendency to pursue the one-sided promotion ratio to a higher level of schooling and to counter the negative consequences of test-oriented education. Since the 1990s, as Chinese education reform deepened, educational assessment reform was implemented along with other reforms with regard to curricula, teaching materials, and instructional pedagogy. The goal was to achieve a quality education with an improved standard in national education, so that education could best serve China's economic development and improve its competitiveness in globalization.;Since 1983, American education reform, with an aggressive involvement of both the federal and state governments, focused on creating and implementing more competitive educational standard for students, teachers, and school administration in a global context. From Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush, U.S. presidents, for both political and economic purposes, attempted to push American education toward a more competitive and international standard of better quality. Through a brief description of the national educational assessment policy documents in China and the United States, and an analysis of these policies and critiques, this dissertation will attempt to uncover the economic and political forces that have driven the national educational assessment reform in the two societies, as seen from both national and global perspectives. |
