Status, Struggles, and Standards: How Class Shaped Judgments on De-standardized Assessment in China’s College Admission

• In Event: 20420 - Section on Sociology of Culture Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 6: Status, Legitimacy, & Legitimation

Abstract

The standardized test score is regarded as a transparent tool to measure students’ abilities, and in recent U.S. administrative discourse, have come to symbolize meritocracy and be used as a tool for racial exclusion. This study examines how the process of legitimating certain types of commensuration contributes to inequality, using the case of China’s de-standardization reform in higher education. Standardized scores in the National College Entrance Exam (gaokao) have been a central determinant for accessing higher education in China since 1977, but recent years have witnessed the rise of de-standardized assessment for holistic evaluation, admitting students by evaluating their personal statements, performance in interviews in English, and gaokao scores. This study explores how families from different social positions react and make judgments about the new assessment method. Drawing on archival data, interviews, and field observations of the admission process, this article adopts a pragmatic approach and analyzes judgments as classificatory struggles to define what constitutes good practices. I find that with different access to resources, families in different positions contest what qualifies as good and bad practices in college application and admission: whether students’ abilities can be commensurated into scores, whether a university’s previous admission scores can signify its education quality, and to what extent economic activities can be involved in the process. I argue this struggles in classifications reflected class distinction; however, the classificatory schemes favored by the more advantaged group were continuously challenged by moral judgments from the less advantaged and faced difficulties in establishing dominance.

Authors

• Yinger YANG, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

• Fangsheng Zhu, Duke Kunshan University