Prof Elley worked through a few case studies in some depth. This one :-
By the end of Year 4 students will read, respond to and think critically about texts in order to meet the reading demands of the NZ Reading Curriculum. Students will locate and evaluate information and ideas within texts appropriate to their level, as they generate and answer questions to meet specific learning purposes….”
So what does Prof Elley tell us is wrong with the standard:-
1. It does not state how well they should read the texts.
2. It does not state how difficult the texts need to be.
3. It does not tell how difficult the questions are that assess the student’s ability.
4. It does not tell how well they should evaluate the text.
To be fair there was some guidance for teachers:-
The texts used for assessing will often include: Some abstract ideas
Some implicit ideas, to be worked out by inference.
Straightforward text structures
Some compound and complex sentences
Some unfamiliar words and phrases
Other visual language features
Figurative language (similes, metaphors, etc)
He makes the point that each of these points requires further teacher judgement.
And the one of the world’s leading assessment experts uses pretty simple language to outline why moderation becomes necessary to have a national standard. He reminded us that the development of NCEA moderation took about a decade – and even after a few years refinement it is still not perfect. The idea that you could have a properly moderated national standard in a few months is just a nonsense because of a series of judgements which can compound the range of results:-
1) the difficulty of the text chosen
2) whether the child has seen it before.
3) whether they have time to read it before the test.
4) whether they read it aloud or silently.
5) whether they’re assessed by their teacher or a stranger
6) whether the questions are literal or inferential.
7) whether the questions are multi-choice or open-ended
8) whether they are arranged in the same order as in the text.
9) whether they are arranged from easy to hard.
10) whether they are answered orally or in writing.
11) how harshly the teacher marks the answers.
So getting national standards right isn’t easy. An there is no sign that Anne tolley understands this.
Dog’s breakfast
Yeah she has certainly taken the National out of National standards by not having it m oderated. The rest of us have managed to learn to read without creepy national standards, why should the youth of today suffer? 
This is an excellent analysis. And the first I have seen.
There needs to be more to show the difficulty of moderation.
>appropriate to their level.
How do I as a teacher interpret ‘their level’– age level or reading level.
As a mother of a dyslexic child (now an adult) I am very fearful for those children with learning difficulties under national standards. No amount of testing will change the way they learn nor will it give them a sense of achievement and a desire to push on through the hard stuff. I suspect it will all get too hard and they will just give up (with the resulting behavioural issues) thus increasing the numbers of young people who “fail” at school.
Each teacher will be supplied with a dart board. Each child will be presented with 3 darts. The child will throw the darts and assuming that they can see the board clearly, the points scored will determine the ranking on the National Test. Early trials have shown that the spread of scores will be reasonably aligned instead of a very time consuming method outlined from Nat Stds above.
Why is seeing the dart board a prerequisite?
Surely all children deserve to attempt to succeed?
What was the ’standard’ when Ms Tolley stated she was ‘qualified’ to be Education Minister.
Strangely on the Parliament website , she lists no qualifications at all, and outside of committee assignments lists no community organisations.
Is she from Mars?
So, under Chopper Tolley’s “standards” the text could be either an extract from James Joyce’s Ulysses or Colin Tompson’s The Short and Incredibly Happy Life of Riley . You couldn’t make this stuff up!
@ghostwhowalksnz
What was the ’standard’ when Ms Tolley stated she was ‘qualified’ to be Education Minister.
She said she was qualified as she was a mum. I can hunt for the artical where she said it later if you wish.
Yes well – this woffly (sp)language in education has been around for a long time – the difference is that schools, teachers and leaders have had time to scaffold the long winded achievement outcomes in the curriculum into bite sized learning intentions that can be measured and that teachers and students can work towards. Years in fact, before being pinged by ero for not having it in place. It takes time to get it right.
In order to understand what that year 4 ’statement’ actually looks like, involves a tonne of work to break it down and to really pinpoint what it will look like for each school. So, therefore consistency across the sector will be somewhat different, and moderation can not happen in terms of each standard until this breakdown of what it means and what it will look like when a child reaches it, has happened. Otherwise you are really not doing it properly.
Given how many stds there are, its a mare of a job if it is to be done properly.
Instead, schools will find that a major waste of time and a pain in the butt (remember they have done it before – twice, for the old curric and now the new one), so will attempt to align it to what they have already – and this is where it makes consistency across the sector tricky – hence, (because the minister will soon start to get reports from ero etc that schools fail to be consistent in what it looks like across the country, which will stuff up her results) there will be a neat little national test for each age level developed to address the inconsistency – and then, because the ‘test’ will show how “bad” teachers are, performance pay will be introduced.
THEN, the minister (Tolley or some other such incompetent puppet) will swing from the rafters blurting on about how great they are for ’saving our kids’ with nat stds, and see everyone, we knew teachers were not up to it so we just ‘had’ to bring a national test – and we just ‘had’ to bring in perf pay to bring those bad teachers into line…
Quite an obvious ploy really…
@Paul. As you say, I can already hear ” teachers can’t be trusted, a testing regime will need to be introduced” …and there you have the full blown SATS nonsense where 21st century will be tested using 19th century tools.
@ASA – yep. Criminal really.
The levels that they are pitching this for kids demonstrates a lack of understanding of learning
Benjamin Bloom (1956) developed a classification of levels of intellectual behaviour in learning. This taxonomy contained three overlapping domains: the cognitive, psychomotor, and affective. Within the cognitive domain, he identified six levels: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. These domains and levels are still useful today as you develop the critical thinking skills of your students.
Mrs. Tolley seems to think nine year olds will be able to critically analyse texts; shame Bloom et al. found quite differently over 50 years ago.
I hope the Real Estate industry is ready for anothe rinflux of teachers to its ranks…