Newspapers have reported results from a major educational study that found students who rank in the top 10 percent of the Basic Competence Test for junior high school and who entered high school in the same region perform better on the General Scholastic Ability Test for college matriculation than those who attend elite high schools.
A closer look at the study, however, reveals a number of problems.
Students who moved locations to enter 27 elite high schools and those who remained in the same area to enter 21 community high schools in fact belong to groups that are not so easy to compare.
"Elite" and "community" high schools were not clearly defined in the study. Although it was not reported in the study which schools fall under the "elite" category, it can be assumed that the elite high schools in the sample do not necessarily offer better quality education than local schools.
In other words, as far as the quality of students is concerned, those who choose to enter high school locally were not necessarily academically worse off than those who attended elite high schools in other districts. The research hypotheses of the study are plainly questionable.
Experience tells us that there might be a number of less accomplished students among those attending elite senior high schools as well as excellent students among those attending local schools.
In other words, those attending local schools are not necessarily performing below the level of those at elite schools in other districts.
There was also a huge discrepancy in the samples used for the two groups: the first consisted of 14,620 students and the second of only 2,480. This gap certainly leaves room for doubt.
The use of such samples leads to suspicions that the study was based on preconceptions that elite high schools are supposed to be superior to community high schools. But as the schools selected for the samples didn't match, it is difficult to accept the conclusion drawn by the study that community high school students performed better.
If the study was intended simply to highlight advantages of attending high school in one's own area, I'm sure the findings would be acceptable to the general public, and that this would also provide evidence to support the Ministry of Education's policies of integrating high schools in local communities and implementing its 12-year compulsory education agenda.
It is not at all certain, however, that we can use this study to prove that attending community schools gives better results.
I basically support a policy of encouraging students to attend high school in the local community, but elite high schools play an important role for those few gifted students that need a competitive environment to tap more of their potential.
I ask therefore that we stop scapegoating elite schools.
Tsai Ping-kun is principal of the National Taichung First Senior High School.
Translated by Ted Yang
On Sept. 3 in Tiananmen Square, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) rolled out a parade of new weapons in PLA service that threaten Taiwan — some of that Taiwan is addressing with added and new military investments and some of which it cannot, having to rely on the initiative of allies like the United States. The CCP’s goal of replacing US leadership on the global stage was advanced by the military parade, but also by China hosting in Tianjin an August 31-Sept. 1 summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which since 2001 has specialized
The narrative surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attendance at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit — where he held hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and chatted amiably with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — was widely framed as a signal of Modi distancing himself from the US and edging closer to regional autocrats. It was depicted as Modi reacting to the levying of high US tariffs, burying the hatchet over border disputes with China, and heralding less engagement with the Quadrilateral Security dialogue (Quad) composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia. With Modi in China for the
A large part of the discourse about Taiwan as a sovereign, independent nation has centered on conventions of international law and international agreements between outside powers — such as between the US, UK, Russia, the Republic of China (ROC) and Japan at the end of World War II, and between the US and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) since recognition of the PRC as the sole representative of China at the UN. Internationally, the narrative on the PRC and Taiwan has changed considerably since the days of the first term of former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁) of the Democratic
A report by the US-based Jamestown Foundation on Tuesday last week warned that China is operating illegal oil drilling inside Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) off the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Island (Dongsha, 東沙群島), marking a sharp escalation in Beijing’s “gray zone” tactics. The report said that, starting in July, state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corp installed 12 permanent or semi-permanent oil rig structures and dozens of associated ships deep inside Taiwan’s EEZ about 48km from the restricted waters of Pratas Island in the northeast of the South China Sea, islands that are home to a Taiwanese garrison. The rigs not only typify
RSS