A new revolution in Georgia - the admissions testing revolution:
In the United States, high school juniors are busy attending prep classes and memorizing lists of vocabulary words to prepare for their SAT exams. In post-Soviet Georgia, however, students aren't sure exactly what to do. This Sunday, a selected number of Georgian high school students will be taking a pilot version of a new standardized exam designed to determine which students will be admitted to the country's universities.The actual exam will be administered in July and will mark a milestone for Georgia. Never before has a standardized national exam been linked to university admissions. Many Georgians are not sure they're going to like the new system.
That proves it - Georgians and Americans are similar! Soon to come - the kvetching, the cynicism, the cries of test bias, and (dare I say it) the ultimate capitalists, aka the test prep companies. Actually, the debate has already arrived, and it sounds remarkably similar to what we see in the US:
In March, hundreds of high school students staged hunger strikes to protest the dismantling of the old system, which had allowed many of them to begin university without taking entrance exams.But there are also students relieved by the introduction of a new system. "Before, they would try to fail you so that you would have to pay," says 17-year-old Ilia Boss, a recent Tbilisi high school graduate. "Now you have a guarantee that you can get anywhere and study if you have knowledge."
Hunger strikes? Hard to imagine a US teen doing that (or paying a bribe, which is supposedly common). Armed guards will accompany the test forms before and after administrations, which suggests that the stakes are a tad higher in post-Soviet Georgia than here.
(Translation of "Number 2 Pencil" in the title courtesy of this site.)
(Update: "Russian" terms changed to "Georgian.")
Posted by kswygert at May 4, 2005 08:02 PM