[Open Forum] Voluntary Academic Achievement Assessments Should Be a Catalyst for Expanding School Autonomy

The education community is abuzz ahead of the implementation of the “1st Comprehensive Plan for Guaranteeing Basic Academic Skills.” The core of this plan is to expand the grade levels subject to academic achievement assessments and introduce an AI-based “customized autonomous academic achievement assessment.” Some teachers’ groups claim this will lead to the revival of standardized testing and the ranking of schools, but such criticism is unfounded and overlooks the essence of the education problem.

Some teachers’ groups, including the Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union (KTU), oppose the basic academic skills assessments included in the comprehensive plan, calling them a revival of standardized testing. However, a closer look at the controversial “customized autonomous academic achievement assessment” shows that schools wishing to participate apply voluntarily, so the criticism that it infringes on autonomy is unconvincing.

Concerns that academic achievement assessments will undermine school autonomy are nothing new. During the Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye administrations, the national-level academic achievement assessment was conducted as a census-based evaluation, but under the Moon Jae-in administration it was switched to a sampling method because of criticism that it was a standardized test imposed uniformly without regard for each school’s autonomy. However, this “national-level academic achievement assessment” is planned to remain a sample-based evaluation rather than a census-based one, so the claim that it revives standardized testing is merely a clichéd criticism.

What has infringed on school autonomy are regulatory policies such as the abolition of autonomous private high schools and regulations on private schools. Academic achievement assessments, rather, are intended to correct the decline in academic standards worsened by the political struggles of some teachers’ groups and the regulatory policies they advocated. If autonomy had long been guaranteed and diverse forms of education suited to each school’s educational philosophy had been carried out, there would have been no need for a state-led academic achievement assessment in the first place. It is contradictory for those who took the lead more than anyone in creating a standardized educational environment to oppose a basic academic skills safety net in the name of guaranteeing autonomy.

Because basic academic skills form the foundation of social life, a continued decline in academic standards constitutes an infringement on students’ basic rights. Accordingly, the fact that the number of high school students falling below basic academic proficiency in the 2021 academic achievement assessment rose by more than 40% compared with 2017 should be regarded as a serious national problem. In this situation, if no countermeasures are taken out of fear of criticism from some teachers’ groups, that itself would amount to a dereliction of duty by a government funded by taxpayers.

Before criticizing the Ministry of Education, the KTU should reflect on whether it has come to view schools not as sacred places of education but as comfortable venues for political slogans. How are students and parents supposed to interpret the fact that, as soon as the comprehensive plan was announced, it joined forces with provincial and metropolitan offices of education through collective agreements and accelerated its criticism? Nor is this the only case. Even as the KTU was engrossed in political attacks over the inclusion of “liberal democracy” and “freedom of enterprise” in the 2022 revised curriculum, denouncing it as “a regression of the curriculum reflecting only the influence of conservative forces,” downward equalization caused by regulation was steadily progressing.

Schools, the basic unit of education, must be guaranteed autonomy. This academic achievement assessment should serve as an opportunity to expand autonomy so that each school’s educational philosophy can be fully realized.

Gyumin Han, Intern Researcher, Center for Free Enterprise (CFE)

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Original title: [자유발언대] 학업성취도 자율평가, 학교 자율성 확대 계기로 삼아야

Author: Gyu-min Han

Date: 2022-12-23

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=free_opinion&pn=7&idx=25227