Chasing a Balance between Equity and Quality: The New High-Quality Schools Project in Shanghai, China

After PISA 2009, Shanghai education has received unprecedented attention from home and aboard. The government in Shanghai summed up the successful experience and launched the New High-Quality Schools (NHQS) project as a response. Under the policy background of promoting high-quality and equitable compulsory education in China, the NHQS project undertook the unique task of creating high-quality educational resources. The project is not only an honorary certification for the project schools, but also an organized small-scale school improvement plan. Compared with the National Blue-Ribbon Schools (NBRS) program in the United States, both projects encourage schools to create high-quality education from a bottom-up approach and provide a platform for excellent schools to share experiences. The distinctive features in the NHQS project are that it emphasizes the indispensable importance of quality with equity, and is more guided by the government. The "Green Indicators" used in the NHQS project go beyond a single criterion of student achievement in the past. However, as the overall assessment system in China has not changed, such small-scale attempts are still facing many difficulties. [For the complete Volume 20 proceedings, see ED622631.]