Students in the UK generally take GCSEs (at 16) and A Levels (at 18). I had to check that the term didn't mean something that couldn't be guessed from the two words, but it seems like these should count as standardised tests. Out of exams for about 15 different qualifications, perhaps one included any element of multiple choice. We certainly don't have anything like the US SATs, taken by everyone in the country and giving you a percentile rank.
I'd be interested in a summary of the US school system from anyone who's been through it. When do you move schools? When do you take various qualifications, and who awards them? What do you get taught each year? It seems to differ in lots of subtle ways from anything I'm familiar with, and I don't understand it as well as I'd like to, despite numerous attempts to figure it out.
In most areas of the US, you essentially have the following progression:
Preschool (3-5)
Elementary School (5-12, labeled grades K-6)
Middle School or Junior High School (12-15 depending on school, grades 7-8 or 6-9)
High School (14-18, usually grades 9-12)
Graduation from High School is a prerequisite for college. Schooling through 16 years or 12th grade, whichever comes first, is compulsory, though most will stay in school until age 18.
In Ohio, standardized tests are given in grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 10. About 80% of the questions are multiple choice. However, the 3-8 tests are meaningless to the students themselves; they won't be held back if they fail the tests. The school may lose its funding, though, or be forced into various interventions, if too few students pass.
Note the first problem here: the school can lose funding for failing students, but they don't get the chance to remediate the students. In fact, the junior high school they go to in 7th grade still must accept a student who has failed the 3rd through 6th grade tests. In addition, the test results are not based on "did this student do better this year than last year," but "did the student do everything this year that s/he was supposed to."
The 10th grade tests are high-stakes tests; students must pass them all in order to graduate. They first take them the second half of their 10th grade year; any that they don't pass get retaken in the first half of 11th grade, then again every following semester. If they've failed more than one, they generally get put into a special remedial class whose only purpose is to get them to pass the test, and they'll take this class until they pass every test. If they did poorly on their 8th grade tests, they'll often be put into this class in 10th grade automatically. That means this classroom is composed of 10th through 12th graders, some of whom are in it for 3 years in a row... and after late March, when the tests are given, the class is useless, and therefore becomes chaotic.
All of this testing varies from state to state, as if the US were composed of fifty different small countries; nonetheless, the basic mandate comes from the federal government.
In addition, actual funding for the schools comes mainly from property taxes at the local level. Only about 5% comes from federal money and 30-50% from the state. However, the local money is not distributed among different localities to equalize things. The property taxes are based on home values, which means neighboring districts can have vastly different budgets per pupil. Rural districts often far the worst.
In addition, the amount of property tax given to the schools is determined by the voters in most localities. Even a $10 a year hike in property taxes must be approved by 50% of voters. Shockingly, it's easier to get such tax levies passed in more affluent communities, where it's more affordable. In the less affluent communities, it's not uncommon for there to be bake sales and the like to get money to pay for advertising to convince voters. This means that budgets can vary significantly from one
year to the next, meaning teaching jobs and therefore class sizes fluctuate.
Now, back to what gets taught. In Ohio, to graduate, a high school student must
pass 4 years of English, 3 years of math, science, and social studies, a year of phys ed, and various amounts of other things. Especially for English and math, this means a lot of students end up in summer school--one reason the US will likely never go to year-round schooling. There is no foreign language requirement in Ohio, though there used to be. Again, all of this varies from state to state, and individual districts can require more.
From elementary to junior high school, curricula are pretty regimented (with different standards by state). Palindrome mentions class sizes; 25-35 per teacher is really closer for elementary school, with 20 being very low. Classes in high schools are about the same size, depending on subject. A high school teacher might teach six classes a day, and have 150 or more total students. (Why are so many high school students given mainly multiple choice tests? Because a good open-response test, which might take as much as 10 minutes to grade, means 25 hours of grading, where a test that can be put through a scanner and graded takes about 15 minutes total to grade, at about 10 scans per minute.)
I think that's probably enough to give you an idea how messed up our system is.
