Characteristics Of American Secondary Educational Examination And Analysis On Cause Of Formation

As the tool of discriminating and choosing the adaptive students, examination has some rationality. But it will do great harm to education system when its' function is mis-enlarged, the scores are the God and the shortcomings are neglected such as tool, finity, contingency and the various unit of scores. The result of this is the "Exam-oriented Education". The students with high scores but low abilities are unsuitable for the higher demands that are brought forward with development of globalization, knowledge economics and information society. There is a big gap between them. So it is one of the most important work for our elementary education to overcome the malpractices of the existing evaluation and examination system in our schools and to carry out Quality-oriented Education in deed. It does great good to education through learning from others. As a country with plenty of exam, most American students are confronted with low pressure of exam. At the same time, the poor quality secondary education coexists with the best higher education. And it lead to the first developed country all over the world. These thought-provoking phenomena come from the first time in American secondary education to use the secondary education test in 1845 ,which now has formed some special features, as follows: 1st, the test serves the educational goal; 2nd, pay attention to ability test; 3rd, civic education in test; 4th, humanity nature of exam ; 5th, proposition adaptation more live and scene; 6th, the result is objective, comprehensive evaluates and report; 7th, three quality defense lines in test. These characteristics of secondary educational exam promote students to understand the knowledge, to train the creativity, imagination, thinking. They also play the special role of forming the ability to find out, analyze and solve the problems and upgrading the quality of civil. These characteristics root in the compatible historical tradition deeply, educational ideas of pragmatism and the quarrel of scientific thoughts and literae humaniores. An analysis on them and cause of formation of exam in American secondary education is significant to reform our educational system of elementary and secondary exam and overcome the shortages of exam-oriented education and to develop higher quality-oriented education. It is also has certain enlightenment and the model significanceto cultivate the persons with personal creativity and adaptive ability to the needs of society.