Testing is important in Turkey, too.

In all of my school visits, we have heard about the test, the test, the test. Instead of being like the EOGs in North Carolina, it is ONE exam given at the end of high school. It has 180 questions and covers mainly math and the sciences.

It is so serious that high school students will go to school in the summer for exam preparation. In addition, students we spoke with today stopped all extracurricular activities in their 11th and 12th grade years so that they could concentrate on the exam.

1.5 million students take this exam every year. Only the top 200,000 get to go to University. From what we have seen so far, most of the students who go to University are those students who went to private school. I wonder what happens with the public school students - guess we will find out when we meet with the Ministry of Education on Friday.