Because I was out of town biking have only just read the Sunday papers. The Herald on Sunday is the first paper to take a considered editorial position on national testing. And they have looked carefully at the issue. Their headline sums it up: “Let the teachers teach not count“.
They refer to John Hattie who is a great mixture of academic and pragmatic.
Professor John Hattie, who has won international recognition for his work on student achievement, says the Government’s new standards regime looks like a backwards step. Hattie’s 15-year study on assessment, published last year, was described as education’s “Holy Grail” in the authoritative Times Educational Supplement in Britain and was praised by Anne Tolley. But he has condemned the planned changes as “going back 50 years” and expressed concern that they will force teachers to teach children according to their school year, rather than their ability level.
And
This process – which teachers commonly call “teaching to the test” – emphasises the importance of ranking achievement and, say teachers, threatens to destroy one of the great strengths of the New Zealand education system, which is teaching children according to their abilities. The Government may take the view that if learning is not being assessed and quantified it is not occurring, but anyone who has found in a teacher a lifelong source of inspiration knows better.
That gets to the nub of the issue and highlights what went badly wrong with parallel assessment approaches in the US and UK.
Teachers and schools were given targets, either formally by the government or informally by way of comparison with neighbouring schools through league tables.
I met with teachers from a school in the UK a decade ago that had been given a target of getting 80% of their pupils through a particular reading test. Money depended on it. Failure would probably result in at least the principal being sacked.
Their approach was both cynical and pragmatic – for a couple of months before the test was due they focussed on 20% of pupils – those between 70% and 90% on the pretest the school did. The top 70% had massive amounts of silent reading and no teacher support and the bottom 10% were basically written off.
Meanwhile the 20% got brilliant personalised teaching and extra help from support staff.
They got through – 88% from memory. But at what cost?
That sounds depressing
They’re just going to churn the children through, all homogenised and pasty!
I’m glad I’m not at school.
There is a distinct stench of anti-intellectualism and anti-academic research emanating from this government – they are consistently ignoring the scientific research and opting for more headline-worthy, vapid policies based on nothing other that blatant ideology.
To make it more hilarious, John Key had the audacity to come on bFM the other day and claim that he is acting in the best interests of whatever, that ideology was not apart of it. On your bike, Mr. Key, and take Chopper with you.
and peddle fast – because there will be people chasing you!
@ Sam. We did a lot of work when I was the Minister of Ed setting the Ministry up to gather best evidence on lots of topics. It didn’t always agree with my prejudices but that was life and you ignore it at your peril.
Indeed, one of the core principles of critical and therefore rational and scientific thinking is that one should value the opinion and judgment of those who are considered to be experts in their fields. One should hold such judgement in a particularly high esteem when it has been peer reviewed by other experts – this is something this government has failed to grasp.
I think that the work done by the Fifth Labour Government in Education was paramount to its recovery from the downright misguided direction education was taken on in the 90s; the evidence really does speak for itself in that regard – I have read plenty of international reports praising the performance of our system. It upsets me greatly that we have such a great system but public perception has been warped such that this seems to be utterly ignored, and as a result we are on course to go back 50 years. If not more.
Sigh.
I have grave fears for the newly revised “New Zealand Curriculum”, expected to be implemented into all schools by 2010.
I worry that National Standards, and a ‘back to basics’ return of the 3Rs, will knee cap much of the progressive ideas that could derive out of the revised curriculum.
It seems like former Education Minister Merv Wellington all over again, minus the flag raising.
Will it be a requirement of this new regime that the test takes place at a particular time? Or can those students who are ready for it at an earlier date do it earlier?
I’m in two minds about it. On the one hand, I’m concerned about teaching students to a lower level than what they’re capable of just because a standardised test is due to be taken.
On the other hand, parents really don’t currently receive adequate information in school reports. The exception for me was when my children were in intermediate school – the teacher reported their achievement against a national average. That’s what I want – a comparison against a benchmark. I can’t tell how they’re doing if there’s nothing to compare it to.
Incidentally Trevor, when you were Minister of Education, you publically released a spreadsheet showing financial indicators of all schools in NZ. This was a really useful document for schools to establish benchmarks and goals for themselves. I was hoping it might be released on an annual basis, but that didn’t happen, more’s the pity.
If they allow children to sit the tests early what will they do with a year-1 student who can pass the year-4 test?
Have just seen this question for oral answer on parliament website:
Hon TREVOR MALLARD to the Minister of Education: What evidence does she have that national standards in literacy and numeracy improve the quality of teaching and learning?
Looking forward to the answer. Will be something along the lines of ‘parents have told us they want clear, plain language reporting and better understanding of where their children sit’. Probably will not clearly answer the question posed (by citing current international research), because that’s not possible.
Loving the question Trevor. Could be reworded to look for research basis for ANY decision out of that Ministry recently.
Am watching parliament TV right now,
RIP ACC
I’m appalled at their suggestions, imagine sick people being forced back into work and then making their injuries worse.
Off thread. Please behave. Trevor
Back on the parliament website, it seems to have disappeared from the list of questions that have been answered. What’s up with that??
Cos it has been and we are waiting for the answer – pathetic as it was to be written up by hansard
@Linda – teach them at the level they’re capable of. That’s what they should already be doing under the current system. I’m sure many are.
The very small schools who have a class of pupils ranging from littlies to Year 6 that they have to teach all at the same time seem to manage that concept.
@Bea I’m sure many in small schools are managing also, but there are still teachers that either don’t believe in giftedness or don’t know how to proceed when faced with it (not taught pre-service). The cuts to school advisors remove the resource that could fill this gap.
Ministry is not using evidence-based policy and it’s really sad for the children that they will miss out on ‘best practise’ teaching due to Government interventions.
The press and public are getting behind the teachers and their professional associations, that is for sure.
Read this in our Christchurch newspaper the Times:
Fear of marking children for life under new standards:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/3024130/Fear-of-marking-children-for-life-under-new-standards\
There is a new parents’ ORGANISATION referred to – it may not become a public movement as big as the pro-child violence groupings – but the fact that such an organisation exists surely reflects some groundswell somewhere?
National Standards are silly. Tuning up science and arts advisors to be numeracy and literacy advisor – again silly.
Waste of specialised resources – silly.
Trevor – it’s your birthday. Make a good meal of it!!!
@Linda
Have you looked on the gifed childrens website nz?
There are programs for gifted children that run through schools. They go to school for 4 days a week and school for gifted children for the other day.
I have an 18mth old teaching herself to read (red is balloon due to a colour book laying around so you can tell she is self taught) and doing alot of things that she shouldn’t be doing at her age and I’m worried too at what this means for her.
Also some gifted children don’t do well in tests. Esp if they are perfectionsts, have to have perfect handwriting etc, some just don’t finish the test as not doing it perfectly is something they just can’t fathom. These children are more affected by results as some are so self critical. This system is not good for any child of this age.