On: The Chinese Civil Examinations

[fallingknife]

There is a reason that it's pretty much 100% upper middle class people that complain about standardized tests being unfair.

[lordnacho → fallingknife]

Huh, poor people who can't afford tutoring complain about it as well.

The only people who can opt out are the ones who are either rich or connected enough to choose a different system.

In China that might mean Ivy League, in the UK it means you pay a very expensive private school to give the kids the best chance.

[seanmcdirmid → fallingknife]

It is mostly the lower classes (or their advocates) complaining about standardized testing not being equitable. And they have a point about biases (not having access to tutoring, or questions that rely on a middle class or better background to answer correctly).

Many richer Chinese kids bypass the Gaokao completely and just take the much easier SAT/ACT to go to school in the states (or equivalent in other countries).

[fallingknife → seanmcdirmid]

> or their advocates

Not really their advocates, but upper middle class people giving themselves moral cover by saying they want to get rid of standardized test to help poor people. Really they want to make sure smart poor people cant out compete them.

[seanmcdirmid → fallingknife]

I’m not sure where you are getting your info, but rich people do much better on standardized tests (ACT/SAT/GaoKao/etc…) then poor people given the resources they have available to prep for the tests. If you think these are equalizers for poor people (or that they think so), you are misidentifying the problem.