American Basic Education Quality Assurance Study

In the fierce international competition,all countries in the world pay special attention to the important role of education in improving the comprehensive national strength.The basic education is an important force to determine the future development level and development potential of a country.Many countries have introduced educational policies and measures to develop basic education.The United States is a paradigm in improving the quality of basic education.Since the late 1980s,the successive US federal governments have made efforts to enhance their influence in the field of basic education in order to make the states coordinate with the federal government's macro-plan,and strive to enable each high school graduate student to receive higher education or access the labor market is well prepared.In the effort to improve the quality of basic education,the measures taken by the United States are multifaceted.The purpose of this paper is to study these measures and summarize the experience of quality assurance of basic education in the United States so as to provide a useful reference for improving the quality of basic education in China.Considering the US decentralized educational management system,this thesis uses historical method,literature method and case method to analyze the measures of quality assurance of basic education from the national level.Then,the paper takes Massachusetts as an example,aiming to research some quality assurance measures of the basic education from national and state level.The study mainly includes the following contents:Introduction mainly introduces the reason and significance of the topic selection,summarizes the current research situation at home and abroad,defines the important concepts involved in this study,states the research methods,and analyzes the innovation and shortcomings of the research.The first chapter is about the history of the United States to strengthen academic standards of basic education.This part combs the federal government's legal texts referring to academic standards since the late 1950s,and introduces the "Common Core State Standards "that the majority of states adopt.Then it analyzes the history of the development of academic standards in Massachusetts,the history of academic standards and the current process of determining academic standards.Thus,the United States is committed to the formation of a relatively uniform academic standards to balance the quality of basic education throughout the country.The second chapter is about the American teacher certification system.The national teacher certification system includes professional teacher certification and alternative teacher certification.Teacher certification in Massachusetts is mainly through the change of teachers' qualification certificate,which means using the teachers' qualification certificate level to represent teachers' professional level and seeking for higher certification level through the promotion of teachers' continuous professional development.The coexistence of national teacher quality certification system and the state teacher certification system are double protections to teachers'quality from professional level and political level.The third chapter is about the United States academic assessment of basic education.The most representative of the national level is the "National Assessment of Education Progress " project.At the same time,the states also have their own independent assessment systems.For example,in Massachusetts,the typical assessment system is "Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System".The assessment at the national level and the assessment at the state level have different types of testing for different groups.The ultimate goal is to include all the students into the assessment systems,assess the student academic performance comprehensively and monitor the quality of the basic education.The forth chapter is about the United States accountability of basic education.The federal government proposes states to establish accountability.Massachusetts assesses school districts and schools by means of the state's accountability indicators,requiring different levels of school districts and schools to assume different responsibilities and reporting the performance of school district and school to the public.Through the federal-state-school districts-schools hierarchical empowerment,state-school districts-schools are more autonomous,at the same time,they have more responsibility for students' academic performance.The fifth chapter is about the experience of quality assurance of basic education in the United States and the enlightenment to our country.Through the above research,this chapter summarizes the useful experience of quality assurance of basic education in the United States and try to enlighten the quality assurance work of our country's basic education in the future.