[Expert Diagnosis] College Admissions and Teacher Reform Require a “Great Education Overhaul” Through Ending Equalization

President Yoon Suk Yeol, who took office on May 10 last year, presented education reform—alongside pension reform and labor reform—as one of the three major reform tasks of his administration. Viewing education as a service industry, he was expected to tackle difficult educational problems based on the conservative values of freedom and diversity, arguing that education should break away from state monopoly and foster diversity and competitiveness. However, although newly appointed Minister of Education Lee Juho has announced various policies and called for a “great transformation in education,” no agenda worthy of being called real reform has yet appeared.

Recently, the government decided to exclude high-difficulty items on the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT)—the so-called “killer questions”—but it is being attacked by the opposition for changing the difficulty level only five months before the test, thereby unsettling students preparing for it. Educationally, it is valid for CSAT questions to be drawn from what is taught in public education, but hastily changing the test’s direction and level of difficulty at a single remark by President Yoon could confuse students who have prepared for it over a long period.

It is unbecoming that the opposition—which had campaigned on not including killer questions on the CSAT and even proposed a bill to ban them—has turned this issue into a political weapon to attack President Yoon. Abandoning the practice of setting excessively difficult questions outside the curriculum in the name of discrimination among applicants would help, to some extent, reduce private education expenses and normalize school education. However, the difficulty issue is a structural problem inherent in the CSAT itself, so more fundamental entrance examination reform, including reform of the CSAT system, must proceed in parallel.

Urgent Need for Essential Education Reform Beyond Eliminating Killer Questions and in College Admissions

The Yoon Suk Yeol administration argues that education reform is desperately needed because “uniform egalitarianism has failed to provide the educational environment students and parents want, and one-sided regulation-oriented policies have failed to cultivate the talent needed for the future society of the digital age.” This diagnosis accurately identifies the problems in educational practice and policy and correctly reads the direction of the times. In his address to the nation marking the first anniversary of his inauguration, President Yoon reflected that “it has been a year of normalizing the abnormal.”

Although his administration seeks to differentiate itself from the Moon Jae-in government, efforts to correct the previous administration’s abnormal policies have been delayed, so people have not felt much change. In one phrase, the Moon administration’s education policy can be called “innovative education.” Innovative education finds the key to reform in moving away from “competitive education,” which ranks students by scores and is seen as the greatest pathology of Korean education. It elevates “cooperative education”—ending competitive education and having students cooperate and grow together—as its highest value. It also pursues equal education by suppressing the strong and supporting the weak, avoids difficult study, and places children’s happiness first.

In its commentary on last year’s June 1 local elections, the Korean Federation of Teachers’ Associations urged that “ideologically biased notions and policy directions of democracy, innovation, human rights, and equality must be completely revised or abolished.” It pointed to the following as representative tasks of liquidation: democratic citizenship education marked by ideological excess and political bias; innovative schools that encourage disparities between schools and declining academic achievement; student human rights ordinances that emphasize rights without responsibility; an assessment taboo that disparages even basic academic achievement diagnostics as uniform testing; the hypocritical abolition of autonomous private high schools and foreign language high schools; and the reckless transfer of authority over kindergarten, elementary, and secondary education to provincial offices of education in a way that strengthens not school autonomy but only “superintendent autonomy.” This criticism is entirely correct. Above all, therefore, the “three-no” innovative education—no tests, no homework, and no discipline—must be abolished and replaced with a policy that emphasizes academic achievement.

Schools are places for education that enables students to “study (academic achievement) and become proper human beings (character).” Yet innovative education pursues “easy education,” creating three-no schools with no tests, no homework, and no discipline. In the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution—defined by artificial intelligence, robotics, and biotechnology—there is no future in three-no education. Unless a shift is made to a policy that emphasizes academic achievement, Korea will fall from its status as a top-performing country and its talent competitiveness will decline.

The children of lower-income families who depend solely on public education suffer the greatest harm. What is needed is a shift from the three-no policy to one that values both academic achievement and character. Nationwide academic achievement assessments should be revived to diagnose learning levels and provide customized guidance. Fortunately, the Ministry of Education recently announced that it would recommend academic assessments for all 3rd-grade elementary students and 1st-grade middle school students and provide incentives to teachers who teach well. Going forward, one hopes to see stronger academic assessments and rewards for schools and teachers that improve student achievement.

The core of education reform is dismantling the outdated education system that is blocking the development of our education. By international norms, representative outdated institutions in need of reform include high school equalization, the government-led college admissions system, and the seniority-based teacher personnel system.

These systems were formed during the period when Korea was growing rapidly through industrialization and the number of students was exploding. Although successive governments recognized that these systems were increasingly out of step with the times, they avoided tackling them because they could not overcome conflicts of interest and differences in educational ideology. Now, as the age of the AI digital revolution arrives and the country faces a demographic cliff caused by a sharp decline in student numbers, creative destruction that breaks vested interests is needed for the future of our students.

First, end high school equalization and introduce a high school choice system.

High school equalization was born in the 1970s, when 1 million children were born annually and schools operated double-shift classes in morning and afternoon sessions. We need to ask whether it is still suitable in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, when only 250,000 children are born each year and individualized education is required. Equalization did achieve some effects, such as dismantling prestigious high schools, easing the high school hierarchy, and reducing overheated entrance competition. But its educational side effects have been greater: downward equalization of academic standards, rising private education costs, and the enfeeblement of public education. As high school equalization, originally created for a short-term mission, has lasted for 50 years, public education has fallen into a swamp of inactivity marked by no competition and no sense of urgency. With competition among schools gone, Korean education has failed in competitive self-innovation.

Accordingly, I propose a high school choice system that would allow students to choose the schools they wish to attend regardless of where they live. Each metropolitan city should be treated as a common school district (single school district), allowing students to apply to general high schools, specialized purpose high schools, and vocational high schools regardless of residence, with principals deciding admission according to criteria set by the school.

This would mean abolishing the current assignment system for general academic high schools in the later admissions round (selection by the superintendent of education) and unifying admissions under principal-led selection. If applicants exceed the quota, student selection criteria should be dualized. Specialized purpose high schools (science high schools, arts high schools, sports high schools, Meister high schools, etc.), vocational high schools, autonomous private high schools and foreign language high schools, and independent private high schools should select students through middle school records and interviews. This is already the current method used by science high schools and vocational high schools. Public high schools and government-dependent private high schools, on the other hand, should admit students by lottery among applicants so as to prevent the side effects of a return to the entrance-exam hell and private tutoring frenzy that existed before equalization. At the same time, autonomous private high schools, foreign language high schools, and international high schools—which are scheduled to be abolished in 2025—should be preserved to guarantee students’ freedom of choice and ensure educational diversity.

Second, fully liberalize college admissions, while the state provides valid admissions data through a career-track CSAT.

As of the 2024 academic year, rolling admissions centered on the student record account for about 79 percent of college admissions. However, student-record-centered admissions have failed to secure fairness or win the trust of students and parents. With the 2022 revised curriculum taking effect and the high school credit system being introduced, reform of both the CSAT and the college admissions system is unavoidable in the 2024 academic year.

We must first correct the previous administration’s policy of uniform egalitarianism.

The CSAT is only one type of test, and its questions are multiple-choice. It has chronic problems: extremely difficult questions are used to discriminate among applicants, and the test-taking style of study fails to cultivate higher-order thinking skills. These problems must be overcome so that the CSAT can be reborn as a valid tool for selecting talent. A career-choice CSAT divided into CSAT I and CSAT II is the best solution.

Students would take CSAT I in common, while CSAT II would be taken according to their intended university major. CSAT I (Basic Scholastic Aptitude Assessment) would measure language and mathematical ability using integrated, cross-curricular materials. CSAT II (Subject-Specific Academic Achievement Assessment) would measure achievement in subjects required by the university or major. It would use written and essay-type questions to assess higher-order thinking. Only top-tier universities with fierce admissions competition would require CSAT II.

Ultimately, college admissions should be fully liberalized so that universities themselves independently determine how to select students. Successive governments have justified admissions reform in the name of normalizing high school education, reducing students’ learning burdens, and lowering private education costs, but they have only changed the content of competition, while policy results have been meager.

Accordingly, the central value of the college admissions system should be to cultivate the competencies required by the future during the admissions preparation process and to identify applicants qualified for university study. Seeking valid and fair admissions methods is the responsibility of universities. A country that distrusts the student selection capacity and conscience of universities—the collective home of intellectuals—and instead relies on state power led by politicians and bureaucrats does not have a bright future.

Third, reform the teacher personnel and pay system around performance.

Colleges of education and teachers colleges recruit excellent students from within the top 10 percent and train them as prospective teachers. Prospective secondary school teachers enter the profession through fierce competition exceeding 10 to 1. In this sense, Korea has succeeded in securing capable people as teachers. By contrast, the personnel system still maintains a teacher salary and personnel structure designed for an era when excellent talent avoided the profession—one that emphasizes seniority and equality. The result is a weak system of rewards for ability and performance, and in the absence of a competitive structure, public education falls behind private education.

Because this equalized personnel system prevents capable teachers from fully demonstrating their abilities, the systems governing teacher pay, evaluation, transfer, and other personnel matters must be redesigned. The teacher pay system should be gradually shifted from seniority-based pay to job-based pay so as to end the controversy over teacher performance bonuses. The rotational transfer system, under which teachers are moved to a different school every five years, should be revised, and one possible solution is to create integrated elementary-secondary teaching certificates to eliminate the barriers between elementary and secondary schools. Teacher competency development evaluations must be conducted properly, rewarding outstanding teachers while requiring those who receive consistently low evaluations to leave the profession.

Although teacher reform has been advocated before, it has often ended as a tempest in a teacup. One such case is worth recalling. During the Kim Dae-jung administration, Minister of Education Lee Donhee was criticized by both the Korean Federation of Teachers’ Associations and the Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union for saying that incompetent teachers should be removed, but his remarks deserve reflection. The core of his statement was self-criticism of teachers’ complacency and of a teacher personnel system that does not reward performance.

He said that “the biggest reason schools cannot win in competition with private academies is that academy instructors devote enormous effort to research activities, whereas teachers simply do not engage in research.” He also pointed out that “teachers do not work hard because their retirement age is guaranteed. Even teachers who do work hard receive little in return, and no environment is provided in which they can demonstrate their abilities.” He went further, saying that “while creating conditions in which teachers can exercise their professionalism, we must also establish a system in which incapable teachers leave their posts.”

In short, building a performance-centered personnel system that measures teachers’ performance and reflects it in compensation and personnel decisions is the shortest path to revitalizing the teaching profession. However, such institutional reform will be difficult to implement and will carry high conflict costs unless teachers understand and agree with it, so gradual and careful policy implementation is required.

There are countless major and minor reform tasks in education policy beyond those presented above. Yet it is neither possible to revolutionize them all at once nor easy even to gather opinions because of wide differences in viewpoint. What matters, however, is that the world is changing at the speed of light, and competition for survival through strengthening national competitiveness is becoming fiercer. Moreover, at the foundation of that competition lies the cultivation of capable talent. The Yoon Suk Yeol administration should focus on institutional reform that changes the behavior of educational stakeholders and the culture of the teaching profession, thereby laying the foundation for a talent powerhouse.

Kyunghee Kim, Distinguished Professor, Myongji University

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Original title: [전문가 진단] 대입·교사 개혁, 평준화 해체로 ‘교육대혁신’ 필요

Author: Gyeong-hoe Kim

Date: 2023-07-13

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=press&idx=25878