In an article on the Education Next website, Tom Loveless writes that the ranking of Shanghai at the top of the 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) scores is misleading. Shanghai's school system excludes most migrant students who have moved from rural areas of China. Shanghai's population today is about 24 million people, with 13 million native residents and 11 million migrants. Exclusionary enrollment practices are rooted in China's hukou system, centuries-old but created in its current form by Mao Zedong in 1958 to control internal mobility. Part domestic passport and part municipal license, rural hukous bar those holding them from a host city's services like social welfare programs, healthcare, and much of the school system. Hukous are also hereditary. PISA publications portray Shanghai as a paragon of equity. The data indicate officials in Shanghai only count children with Shanghai hukous as its population of 15 year-olds, and the OECD accepts those numbers. PISA officials are not shy about offering policy advice to countries, Loveless writes, especially those they believe will promote equity: delaying tracking and ability grouping, reforming immigration, redistributing resources to poorer schools, and expanding early childhood education, for example. Yet they are silent on a discriminatory policy affecting millions of Chinese children. More

Source:  Public Education News Blast

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