Analysis of news articles on the Customized Assessment of Educational Achievement using text analysis

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyze the perception of stakeholders and the public on the Customized Assessment of Educational Achievement (CAEA) proposed to ensure the basic level of academic performance of students in South Korea. For this purpose, news articles and online comments were collected from major newspapers and broadcasting stations using web-crawling method. The LDA topic modeling and semantic network analysis were carried out for the news articles, while keyword frequency analysis were carried out for the news articles and comments. Seven topics were extracted from the LDA analysis: (1) conflicting responses from superintendents for expansion of the CAEA, (2) conflicts between the Office of Education and teacher organizations over participation in the CAEA, (3) implementation of the comprehensive plan to ensure that every student meets the basic level of academic standards, (4) expansion of the CAEA for improving academic performance by conservative superintendents, (5) expansion of CAEA’s target grades, (6) the 2021 National Level Academic Achievement Assessment result, and (7) implementation of the CAEA and private education. In addition, the need for the national or state-level customized assessment and concerns about polarization in education associated with mandatory administration were found in the analysis of comments on news articles. Finally, based on the perceptions of stakeholders and the public explored through this study, implications for the educationally-sound applications of the CAEA were discussed.