A message from Australia

I think it is worth sharing the below posting by Australian educator Phil Cullen ( Phil used to be Director Primary Education Queensland ) .Thankfully he hasn't lost his belief in creative education. Australia has moved further along the downhill  accountability track than New Zealand but we are rushing to catch up - a race to the bottom!

To access Phil's site click here.
IS 2012 THE YEAR FOR AN EDUCATIONAL R/EVOLUTION?

On Wednesday, 21 December, the ASIDE blog commented upon the TIME magazine choice of The Protestor as the person of the year. ‘Frustrations felt by millions nationally and internationally reached breaking point ... in 2011...by teachers as well.’

http://theasideblog.blogspot.com/2011/12/is-2012-year-for-educational-reform.htm

“To top it off, we have a growing number of disgruntled youth, who drop out of an education system that sees them as a number and fails to see the ensuing impact on society as a whole...Conformity and measurement are being used to define students, yet we constantly talk about differentiation, multiple learning styles, and the whole child....This leads us to ask the question, how many teachers will ‘dropout’ from conformity and measurement?”

“Just think how much more we could engage students if we were not so close to the edge of the cliff.”

There were protests everywhere in 2011 about the branding of schools with numbers. This week, also [Monday, 19 December] 1046 New York principals signed a petition opposing the linking of their own evaluation [ A score out of 100] with the results of their students’ testing scores. Such number branding is coming down here.

On July 30, you will remember how the many thousands of teachers marched on the White House chanting “No Testing. No Testing. 1-2-3”. They were supported by famous people – film stars, professors, legislators. Major cities around the country conducted their own protests at the time. No change yet, however. The school-bashing ideology is very strong. Teachers are very compliant.

Protests, however, are growing in size and number. Protestors now Occupy. It’s all coming to a town near you in Australia, for sure, if political parties don’t start caring for kids. There is a limit to the patience of parents and teachers down-under and up-over.

On January 7, 2012 the United Opt-out National in the U.S. is encouraging everybody to send a card or letter to their educational superordinates and legislators [our Minister for Education and Federal Minister for Education in our case] telling them ‘to end standardized testing.’ Check this out on http://unitedoptout.com With determined organisation and parent support, this movement could become world wide. Although schools in the southern hemisphere are closed, we parents and grand-parents can still have our say. Post offices aren’t closed.

Why be an Australia ( or a Kiwi) who has trouble grasping the significance of these movements?

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Posted in: Assessment,Big Picture,Creative teaching Educationalists,guest blogger,national standards,national tests,Rants and Raves,teaching and learning

Something all principals ought to have written to their students' parents

A principal and his website posting to parents

Where are we heading, and what have we lost to get there?

Danny Nicholls is principal of St Patrick’s Catholic School, Taupo. He runs a website intended for the school community and other interested readers. The beliefs and opinion expressed are his personal ones. Danny's blog is a well balanced description of the current environment schools find themselves in - if only more school principals ( or better still groups of principals) had written, or even shared similar newsletters.


One of the big building blocks of any school is curriculum delivery. Here in New Zealand we have a fantastic national curriculum which gives sufficient breadth for schools to develop and deliver really exciting and innovative programmes that meet local needs.

The New Zealand Curriculum has been bedded in over a few years now and replaced the more ‘tick the box’ style approach of the previous document.

In particular, the promotion of Key Competencies was a really exciting move towards developing what we want and most value for our students. This curriculum went through extensive consultation and trial/error periods before being accepted and used. I can recall many hours spent getting to understand the intent of this new curriculum and being very excited about its potential.

Sadly, it looks like we are not going to get the most out of this new curriculum, which has been hailed as a world leader by educational experts. The mood at the moment in New Zealand is one of accountability and narrow test scores which inevitably will mean schools not spending so much time on developing the Arts/Health and PE/Languages, as any gains made in those areas will not be directly reflected in national standards data. That to me is one of the most disappointing aspects of the forced imposition of the standards – not the accountability, because that's important to have, and what ERO do already – but what we have lost along the way.

I think back five years to the support my school received. We were a well performing school who were accepted on to a Health and PE contract. This enabled us to have a specialist teacher/consultant working in the school at regular intervals during the year developing teacher capability and confidence in teaching Health and PE. We also hosted a cluster Arts contract, which meant that the regional Arts adviser would run after school workshops once a term at our place, and teachers from around the region would come for a staff meeting in which they developed new skills in teaching an aspect of the Arts curriculum. I also had access to a Leadership adviser who visited once a term to meet with us to give advice or direction we may have needed and to keep us in the loop of the latest developments out of Massey University which was where we drew most of our PD from.

The landscape has changed dramatically and we work in a tighter economic environment, so there are no more Arts, Health, and PE or Leadership advisory positions available to schools. Any professional development or support offered by the Ministry of Education is solely focused on supporting the goals of national standards and is only accessible to those who can prove that they are failing their students. The message is that if you are doing a good job then you are on your own. At another level the message is also that the national focus is on the tail of achievement not extending the brighter children – there is literally nothing available to assist schools to challenge and extend brighter students.

The model being offered now is ‘contestable’ or ‘targeted’ meaning that schools, as of right, do not have access to advisory support but must either pay for it or prove that they are failing their communities and require external support. I find it sad to receive pamphlets from Waikato and Massey (geographically we are in the middle so get both institution’s mailings) touting for business at ‘competitive’ or ‘tailored’ rates – for services that schools used to receive as of right. Money that should be going on school based resources now needs to be spent on providing teachers with the ongoing professional development they require. I imagine both universities are working in difficult times and am saddened to see what we now have to work with. It is well known that the investment by government in education is significantly less than in other comparable nations – our system does have that ‘run on the smell of an oily rag’ ethos, and always has done – yet internationally our results are well above what could be reasonably expected. Not that you would know it if your only source of information on school performance came from those who really should know better.

We continue to hear about the ‘1 in 5’ are failing school’ from the government – as if this is solely a school failing and there are no other social issues in the mix. What about ‘1 in 5 came to school without breakfast today’, or ‘1 in 5 spend their schooling life bouncing from school to school with no stability or opportunity to cement learning patterns’, or even ‘1 in 5 who take 1 in 5 days off school regularly’ – not so catchy or vote grabbing. Anyone who understands a bell curve knows that there will always be those who do not achieve as well as others in particular areas. That is reality. I am not suggesting for a minute that we should not be concerned about raising achievement for the most vulnerable – we always should be, and I know in my school a disproportionate amount of time, money, energy and resources goes into just that – but where is the conversation about high achievers? Or even the ‘average joe or jill’ – do they get a look in?

Remember that summit/think tank held just after National were elected three years ago, investigating how to promote our nation and make it even better? There was a real focus on innovation and doing things differently. Nurturing the tall poppies to make them really blossom was a sound-bite I can recall. Sadly it seems that optimistic start to National's tenure has all but gone. They’ve governed through a tough patch with global financial problems and two national tragedies, so I don't begrudge them the decisions they've had to make in that sense – I just wish it wasn’t at the expense of our high achieving children.

My concern is that post election this narrowing will only get worse. Shonky, unreliable tables comparing schools to one another will begin appearing in newspapers. Schools will begin to be tagged as ‘excellent, ‘failing’ or anywhere in between based on manipulation of data and/or differing assessment practices. Teachers will continue to get bashed in the media despite 95% of them being dedicated, caring and effective professionals. There are a few bad eggs like in any profession yet from what you read in the media (and it will only get worse) it seems all teachers are ineffective. There is already a mini-exodus of school principals as the reality of what we are being charged with overseeing and implementing in our schools begins to take effect. This will only get worse over the next few years. The whispers about how our roles and employment conditions will change post-election will have dire consequences if realized.

National standards on their own will not make a difference to any child’s achievement. Parents who are engaged and work positively with schools already know or can easily find out how their child is doing. The ethos of partnership is eroding and being replaced by one of reporting and suspicion. So much money being invested in a scheme which has little if any benefit to children. And in the meantime a world leading curriculum is abandoned ...

I hope that whether through school/parent pressure, or just common sense, we will see the re-promotion of the NZ Curriculum as our guiding document. This should be the cornerstone of student improvement for our children not a narrow Literacy and Numeracy focus. Those areas are foundational and absolutely at the core of what a school does but we can be so much more than that.

Last night at our teacher meeting we did some preliminary work on our inquiry learning approaches for 2012. That was intended as the posting for today, but clearly I got sidetracked. My biggest concern is that such staff meetings in the current climate may become a luxury as we will need to spend the majority of our time on national standards compliance matters. This isn’t what I want for my children and I know parents in our community don’t want that either.

Unfortunately the debate and decision making on educational direction and policy shifted out of the hands of those actually doing the work some time ago. It is up to us instead to determine what is best at a local level as the national direction is already fixed.

Danny Nicholls

Principal


St Patrick's Catholic School, Taupo

http://www.blogger.com/www.stpatsprincipal.blogspot.com

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Posted in: Big Picture,Creative Schools,guest blogger,Leadership,Ministry NZCurric,national standards,teaching and learning

Where has that Aussie confidence gone from their teachers -and a look at where New Zealand is about to go!

A little bit of Ned Kelly spirit is required to combat the technocrats in charge in Aussie (and now in New Zealand).

Guest blog by Phil Cullen
Ex Director Primary Education Queensland.

Check out Phil's website.

ORWELL IS HERE!

The year of Orwell and  the introduction of Orwellism has been delayed.

 In the 1950s when we first read about a future manipulated, dysfunctional society, 1984 seemed to be so far away. ‘1984’ didn’t happen when it should have. Society was fairly comfortable in 1984, except for Queensland. The leader there had been appointed by divine authority, he had suggested; and made some curious judgements about schooling on moral grounds.

None could even imagine, then, a future where the country was run by a focussed control-pedant , who preferred to rule by fear-based, heavy-handed distrust and make decisions about  schooling just to illustrate his/her authoritative control. 

By the 1960s, the western world was on the cusp of creating a school culture of learning that would have had no equal in history. These years produced the greatest thinkers and writers of the 20th century; and teachers of the time, straining to shatter the shackles of colonial styles of teaching-learning were about to break loose. They read and they observed and they talked and they listened and they shared. The mood of the late sixties and seventies with its Deweys, Goodlads, Bassetts, Parrys, Postmann & Weingartners, Holts, Plowdens, Cleggs...such a long list of child-oriented scholars and writers...was one of hope. 

Every state Australian state bureaucracy appointed visionaries to important positions [e.g. Guymer in Q’ld, Swan in NSW, Jones in S.A., Shears in Vic., Beare in ACT] irrespective of the local political power base. Schooling was on the up and up - despite one or two attacks [e.g Back to Basics, M:ACOS] that the press enjoyed featuring.

The dystopic political arrangements for an Orwell-1984-style-Australia were put on hold for a quarter-of-a-century. It was destined to happen as soon as despotic managerialists and measurers introduced euphemisms as articles of faith [e.g. ‘outsource’ = don’t trust your own; ‘down-size’= sack those you fear] circa 1990. The public learned to tolerate this inconsistent square-peg  ruddism [in Q‘ld. in particular] without dissent; and ‘orewellism’ entered the language as a suitable descriptor for what eventually happened in 2009. Big Brother showed himself.

Turn back to the real 1984.

 The year itself, might have been considered a fizzer for those who had trusted  George Orwell’s predictions, but child-oriented schooling itself was well under way and schools were happily optimistic at that time. Big Brothers were not necessary. Teachers believed in themselves. They felt proud of what they were doing.

I could open a Principals Conference in 1984 by saying “There is no task so demanding, no occupation [apart from that of religious minister or priest] so ethically professional than that of a primary or secondary teacher. Its impact on the welfare of the world, the care for people as people, the influence that it has on the achievements of each person and subsequently of each nation places the profession as something apart from all other occupations. It is concerned about a nation’s most precious commodity and its richest resource – children. It is a self-monitoring, self-improving profession ...and it is in this context that we have foregathered. We hope to make a determined and realistic commitment to enlivening classroom practices because they are the base-line of what we are all on about.”

The conference was about ‘Excellence in Teaching’. Attenders talked about teaching and learning and on how to improve both.  They could say that and do that in 1984 and believe in solid, immovable professional ethics. No jumped-up politician, lawyer or sciolist would dare to tell teachers what to do and how to do it. The force felt solidly professional from top to bottom and remained so until 1990 or thereabouts.

We can’t make those sort of statements that I made, anymore. The political Darleks, ‘utterly without pity, compassion or remorse with every emotion removed except hate’ have moved in. Professional schooling principles have backed off.

A 2011 national conference for principals [that I ‘attended’ on-line] was about improving scores on national blanket tests. Schooling by numbers. Pupil welfare and progress did not get much of a mention. Ethics had travelled a long way .

It was another sign that Orwellism was well entrenched. It had twenty-five years to arrive and it had infected all parts quickly.

What is orwellism? 

 Described as oligarchical dictatorship,  based on a nonsensical, peculiar thought process that manipulates social structures on behalf of the most powerful,  participants can indulge in double-thinking by holding two contradictory beliefs and believing in both. Teachers can believe in freedom to learn and use fear-driven practice techniques to prepare for Big Brother’s NAPLAN tests.

Thus, by embracing inconsistent concepts, school principals can acquiesce to the decadent political view that low test scores indicate poor teaching and shabbily-run schools; and their professional conscience won't worry them. Professionally neutered, they are unable to dissent from or offer ethical advice to political masters. The work-force generally is on the same wave-length. The school-tardy, both pupils and teachers,  must be punished; and all adults generally subscribe to this notion.

With ethical principles in suspension through political mandate, this further entrenches the style of Orwellian oligarchical dictatorship that decries individuality and teaching ethics.

Teachers are told what to do and what to think. School leaders acquiesce as it is easier to do do so. Double-think prevails. True-blue professional codes are trashed with organizational approval. The sycophants feel even more secure and comfortable; and the ultimate victims are not taken into account at any stage. .

Whereas politicians kept out of –perhaps avoided -  serious curriculum considerations in the real 1984, there has been a change of social climate since then. As George O himself said in the other ‘1984’, “ In our age, there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics’ ; and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasion, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.”  So its welcome to that sort of world for all 2011 school personnel and clients. 

Teachers probably sense the outrageously camouflaged intentions of our fat controllers, but cannot do anything about it. If the playing field was level, their organizations would be able to say to Her Overbearance, “We won't give your tests to our pupils.  We love them and want them to learn. It is unworthy of you to ask us to do so and a serious breach of schooling ethics.”

The field is very steep. The ball gets away from you if you don’t try to stop it. Orwellism is in full swing in dystopic Australia

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Posted in: Big Picture,change,Creative teaching Educationalists,guest blogger,Leadership,Ministry of Education,national standards,national tests,Rants and Raves

National Testing - here we go.

Guest post by Allan Alach

Halfway through the first week of the term break, and the nonsense keeps being spilled out. The depth of deviousness being displayed by the Ministry of Education (MOE) , no doubt following orders from above, is beyond comprehension.

Schools with ‘non-complaint’ charters have been aware that the MOE were in the process of mailing out “letter two’, setting requirements for charters to be compliant, and imposing a tight deadline for this. That was only to be expected.

However, for these letters to be dated (and posted to schools) on October 7th, the last day of the term, conveys another story. So does the tight deadline of October 21st, the Friday of the second week of the term break.

In the words of the cliche, ‘it’s not rocket science’ to know that schools are closed during the breaks, and that mail is therefore not likely to be processed. So that then raises the question: Were the dates, of posting, and of the deadlines, set during the breaks because of ignorance or deliberate action?

I don’t think it takes too much pondering on this to come to the obvious conclusion - this is deliberate, especially the deadline date of October 21st. Why would this be, I wonder. Again the conclusion is obvious. The MOE (and their political masters) want schools to be caught out as non-compliant, to then justify the appointment of limited statutory managers. As we’ve learned previously, this is all targeted to happen in the closing weeks of the election campaign.

This just drives home the point that has been made over and over again - there is nothing educational about national standards. This is purely for political self interest.

If education and ‘raising standards’ was genuinely the issue, then there would be far more compromise and discussion to work through issues and concerns, to ensure that systems and processes were developed that would be educationally positive.

We know that the National Party led government are not taking any regard of international and national research and evidence that clearly shows that a) standards/testing based regimes don’t ‘raise achievement’, and b) this narrowing down of the curriculum is very harmful to children’s overall educational development.

This disregard of expert evidence is not a New Zealand phenomenon, and so this points also to a wider agenda.

The lack of morality in using vulnerable children as political levers is beyond my comprehension.

Just to stir the pot some more, the MOE, (or more specifically, the National Standards Sector Advisory Group), is advertising for a contract senior project manager:

Job Description

Contract Senior Project Manager for a 12 month term - start date from mid Oct to mid Nov.

Project Purpose

• The Consistency Framework will establish a nationally consistent approach to forming overall teacher judgments in relation to National Standards, and aims at reducing teacher’s workloads.
• The Project has two main components:
• The educational component (Framework) will involve the necessary research and analyses to develop empirically-calibrated scales and exemplars.
• The systems development component (Architecture) will involve the development of the necessary software for teachers to have reliable and easy access to data and reports to enable them to make judgements in relation to the empirically-calibrated scales.
• Advisory groups have been established
• Three advisory groups have been established to provide advice on the development of the NSCF.
• The NSCF Project needs to implement the solution ready for the 2014 academic year.

Another link details the project in more detail and includes this phrase:

Project overview •

This project proposes the development of an empirically-calibrated psychometric scale for teacher judgments in relation to National Standards.

This is crazy talk. How can an ‘empirically calibrated psychometric scale’ be used to support judgements?

Psychometry is the application of measures of measurement to the various branches of psychology. IQ tests come under this framework - the very questionable belief that ‘intelligence’ can be given a number. The whole area of psychometry has been challenged on the same basis - how can human intellectual attributes be measured? They can be described, but measured? Given numbers? Ratings of worth? According to whom? If something is to be measured, what do we use to do the measuring? Why tool A instead of tool B?

My article in the latest issue of Education Today, on Mark Garrison’s book “A Measure of Failure - the political origins of standardized testing” explores this further in the New Zealand politically driven education context.

Another section worthy of note from the Project Overview website is this one:

The NSCF will be made straightforward and easy for teachers - using a software tool (possibly internet based).

Software tool? Euphemism for TEST.

Let’s reflect on this a little more. Software/online assessment….. why that describes e-asTTle.. I wonder who owns the intellectual copyright to e-asTTle?

For overseas readers e-asTTle is an existing computer based assessment system. Here’s the opening statement from the relevant website:

Welcome to e-asTTle

e-asTTle is an online assessment tool, developed to assess students’ achievement and progress in reading, mathematics, writing, and in pānui, pāngarau and tuhituhi. The tool has been developed primarily for the assessment of students in years 5–10, but because it tests curriculum levels 2-6 it can be used for students in lower and higher year levels.

e-asTTle provides teachers and school leaders with information that can be used to inform learning programmes and to apply teaching practice that maximises individual student learning. Many teachers using e-asTTle have found it to be a great tool for planning, for helping students to understand their progress, and for involving parents in discussions about how well their children are doing.

Get the picture? Ostensibly this was developed as a ‘formative’ assessment tool, however many people have had their doubts about this all along.

Back to the Project Overview, which continues:

The programme of work will be based upon:

• Progression definition
• Sample data analysis (based upon a collection of an evidence base and judgements on each progression from a sample of students). Note: The scale for each sequence of standards will be constructed from the data using Rasch analysis.
• Standard setting
• Software development.

Rasch analysis?

From Wikipedia:

“Rasch models are used for analysing data from assessments to measure variables such as abilities, attitudes, and personality traits. For example, they may be used to estimate a student's reading ability from answers to questions on a reading assessment…”

or, how about this, from http://www.rasch-analysis.com/

“Rasch analysis can be applied to assessments in a wide range of disciplines, including health studies, education, psychology, marketing, economics and social sciences.

Many assessments in these disciplines involve a well defined group of people responding to a set of items for assessment. Generally, the responses to the items are scored 0, 1 (for two ordered categories); or 0, 1, 2 (for three ordered categories); or 0, 1, 2, 3 (for four ordered categories) and so on, to indicate increasing levels of a response on some variable such as health status or academic achievement. These responses are then added across items to give each person a total score. This total score summarise the responses to all the items, and a person with a higher total score than another one is deemed to show more of the variable assessed. Summing the scores of the items to give a single score for a person implies that the items are intended to measure a single variable, often referred to as a unidimensional variable.”

The Project Overview concludes with this statement:

Further notes

• The professional judgment of teachers, about their students’ progress and achievement, is at the centre of the National Standards. The NSCF will support teachers to make consistent judgments and support accurate measurement of students’ progress against the standards. The NSCF will support, not supplant, the professional judgment of teachers.
• There is a need for a system to ensure consistency in the way in which teachers integrate diverse evidence to form judgments, and measure student progress, against the standards.
• The professional judgment of teachers in interpreting evidence of students educational achievement, including classroom observation, cannot and will not be replaced by a machine.

This is just ‘smoke and mirrors’ to obscure the indisputable evidence that a version of national testing will be in place for the 2014 school year.

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Posted in: guest blogger,Ministry of Education,national standards,national tests

What Is A Teacher?

Guest post by Allan Alach

I found the following poem (written by Lee Crockett, Ian Jukes and Andrew Churches) on Tony Gurr's All Things Learning blog. Great blog to follow, by the way!

Given the current situation in New Zealand education, over the introduction of national standards, and the strong indications that national testing is on the way, I thought it was timely to be more positive and proactive about teachers, who have the power to make positive changes in the lives of children. This is, of course, with the proviso that politicians, of any kind, stay out of education!

What is a Teacher?

A guide, not a guard.

What is learning?

A journey, not a destination.

What is discovery?

Questioning the answers, not answering the questions.

What is the process?

Discovering ideas, not covering content.

What is the goal?

Open minds, not closed issues.

What is the test?

Being and becoming, not remembering and reviewing.

What is learning?

Not just doing things differently, but doing different things.

What is teaching?

Not showing them what to learn, but showing them how to learn

What is school?

Whatever we choose to make it.

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Posted in: Big Picture,Creative Schools,Creative teaching,guest blogger,teaching and learning

Fasten Your Seatbelts!

Guest Post by Allan Alach

Well, as I’ve been predicting, along with many others, it seems, from this article by Kelvin Smythe, that national testing is on the way. I don’t know Kelvin’s source for this, but seeing as he was spot on with his story about the Ministry of Education seeking people to train for limited statutory manager roles in schools, we can expect that his source is accurate this time as well.

It was only a matter of time, as many commentators have been saying, for testing to appear on the radar. National’s standards were never going to work, for many reasons, all of which have been well expressed in many different forums. My suspicion is that the protests and non-compliance from schools is exactly what was expected and that we may have played very nicely into their hands.

As I have written previously in a number of other guest postings on this blog, this now opens the way for a probable attack on the lack of professionalism of principals, the New Zealand Principals Federation (NZPF), and even more importantly in the eyes of the National government, an attack on the New Zealand Educational Institute (NZEI). For overseas readers, the NZEI is the primary teachers union, representing principals and teachers, while the NZPF is a professional body for principals and is not their union.

These attacks would be used to justify the introduction of the national testing regime because 'of the unprofessionalism and vested interests' of these groups, and especially the NZEI for ‘protecting incompetent teachers.’ The only remaining question is whether this will appear as part of the coming election campaign, or be kept secret until after the election. My personal opinion is that while union bashing will be a feature of the campaign, the testing agenda won’t be revealed until after the election, should the National Party be returned to power. This would be consistent with other policies of the present government.

This approach is completely consistent with the models used in the USA, which is to be expected, seeing as the whole standards agenda, including rhetoric, seems to be a carbon copy of the process there. This link has been made time and time again, by many people, including Kelvin Smythe and Bruce Hammonds here in New Zealand and by Phil Cullen in Australia, and many others, and I’ve also drawn the dots together in my articles. Everything is tracking according to the predictions we’ve all made, and if you care to check out ALEC in the USA (especially their education policies) you’ll see where much of this originates.

The latest edition of the Education Today magazine will be out shortly. This includes an article that Bruce Hammonds asked me to write about the book “A Measure of Failure: The Political Origins of Standardized Testing” and especially looking at this in the New Zealand context. One thing that is very clear, from this, and many other books (for example “The Case Against Standardized Testing” by Alfie Kohn) is that standardized tests are imposed for political reasons, to enable the ‘school reform’ agenda to be set in place. Read this article when Education Today arrives and you’ll see what I getting at, and why.

Why ‘school reform?’ That is easy to answer, and the path is well laid out - to open the way for privatisation of schools. Phil Cullen has illustrated this very well in his Treehorn Express newsletters, as have many people in the USA. The most well known of these is Diane Ravitch and there are many, many others, such as Alfie Kohn and Susan Ohanian. How much more evidence do you need?

How about this article then?

“What Does Rupert Murdoch Want With America's Schools?

Murdoch has made it very clear that he views America's public schools as a potential gold mine.”

That’s Murdoch. What about the Pearson Group? McGraw Hill? Both are heavily involved in US education. Pearson Group have a nice little deal running - one of their subsidiaries helped develop the USA Common Core Standards (like national’s standards, but worse). Another subsidiary is developing curriculum resources to ‘assist schools in raising achievement” against these standards. And so the stories keep on coming - they’re all out there in plain view, if you care to look. Here’s an example: Erect Wall Between Test Companies and School Officials

There are many USA websites and Facebook pages that provide all the information you could ever want. I’ve listed these several times in previous articles.

Think we are immune from this corporatisation? Why would you think that? Is there an opportunity for the private sector to make profits running schools? Seeing as a private company is making a profit out of running a prison in Auckland, why would schools be exempt? Is there an opportunity for private companies to prepare and sell curriculum resources that will supposedly help children pass tests? Common overseas; are we any different?

No.

The future is very clear.

National testing, and all that follows from this, is on its way unless the people of New Zealand take action to stop it.

Unless there has been much preparation behind the scenes, which has been kept secret, I can’t see systems being ready for this to arrive in 2012.

With the three year term of a New Zealand government, 2014 is the next election year. Introducing tests then seems to be politically risky. What does that leave?

2013.

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Posted in: guest blogger,Ministry of Education,national standards,national tests

The Ministry of Mindcontrol is also the Ministry of Truth.

Guest Blog by Allan Alach

I had hoped to be able to write an education focussed article for once, but in today’s political climate, education is way off the agenda.

So we are now are in the next phase of the battle against national’s standards (which is what they really are), following the imposition of charters on to non-compliant schools by MiniMind, a.k.a Ministry of Mindcontrol a.k.a Ministry of Education.

It seems, from the reports of MiniMind threats to schools up north, that Orwell’s label “Ministry of Truth” (Minitrue) also be applied to MiniMind, to give us MiniMind & Minitrue.

For those who don’t know the story, on Friday September 10, two principals of small schools received a telephone call from a regional Ministry of Education official over the ‘disclaimers’ each school’s Board of Trustees (elected groups of parents to govern schools) had added as a protest against the forced inclusion of Ministry of Education defined targets in their school charters.

This Ministry official apparently told both principals that the disclaimer had to be removed by Monday or else a limited statutory manager would sent in to each school. The stories recounted by both principals are very similar. The Ministry, on the other hand, deny such phone conversations took place, or that the threat of limited statutory managers was made.

Two very different stories here. Someone is telling ‘porkies’ (a big lie - from the English rhyming slang 'porky pies', which rhymes with lies.)

Who do you think it is? The two principals who separately related their recollections of the phone calls, or the Ministry of Education, wearing their Minitrue hats?

Let’s take, at face value, the Ministry denial, that limited statutory managers are not being sent in to schools who are fighting national’s standards, and the forcibly imposed charter targets.

Why then is the Ministry approaching people to train them for a statutory manager’s role, with November 21 being mentioned as a possible date? What’s the significance of November 21, apart from being the Monday in the last week of the election campaign? I see that Kelvin Smythe has also picked up on this. Please note his advice over the use of the phrase ‘disclaimer.’

Looking at developments over time, connected with this planned strike against schools in the last week of the election campaign, we can discern a degree of increasing anxiety at higher levels that all is not running to plan. Have you noticed that the Ministry’s statements and actions keep changing? That what is acceptable one week, is not acceptable the following week? This makes it even more vital that we all hold fast until the election, at the very least.

Tragically, the Ministry of Education has been diverted from the role of supporting and developing education to becoming the policing arm of government. The aggressive attitude of the Ministry towards schools, regardless of their positions over national’s standards, is very disturbing. Note also that the government (and Minister of Education) is being very quiet on these moves against schools, leaving the Ministry to take the ‘bully boy’ role. Anything to do with the coming elections by any chance?

I am sure that many Boards of Trustees will have noticed that their national organisation, the New Zealand School Trustees Association (NZSTA), is extremely quiet over all this. Given that a significant proportion of their member school boards are under extreme pressure, one would think that this association would be providing support and guidance. Not a sound, it seems. What does this tell us about the political allegiances of the movers and shakers in key NZSTA positions? All we need to know, actually.

This year has seen many key people leaving the head office of the Ministry of Education, for unspecified reasons. It is very easy to speculate that these departures are linked, and that many people, those with principles, have walked out. We can also speculate that there are Ministry employees, both in the head office, and in regional offices, who are very uncomfortable with the position that they now find themselves in, but who cannot afford to quit. Horrible situation, and we need to have empathy for these people.

There is a third group however; those who are actively and enthusiastically implementing any aspect of the Ministry’s agenda, and especially those who have been appointed as Student Achievement Practitioners (SAPs.) What an appropriate acronym!

These ‘quislings’ have come from an extensive background of experience in education. Many are former principals who have now joined the Ministry’s version of East Germany’s Stasi secret police, tasked with ensuring that schools comply.

Kelvin Smythe, in his typical ‘take no prisoners’ manner, has addressed the role of SAPs in this posting “SAPs being turned into goon squads.” If you’ve not read this article, now would be a very good time.

Recently the Labour Party released their education policy for the coming election campaign. This policy has taken note of the concerns raised about national’s standards, and, if elected, Labour will make these standards voluntary, do away with the requirement to send data to the Ministry of Education ( no league tables) and switch the focus back to the achievement bands detailed in the New Zealand Curriculum.

This is essentially a move back to the pre-national’s standards situation, although Labour have covered their bases by maintaining a focus on ‘raising achievement’, as Labour education spokesperson Sue Moroney writes in this Waikato Times article,

Labour will set high expectations for each student according to his or her individual ability – we call it "Reaching for the Stars." We'll also make sure parents get clear and regular feedback on their child's progress against the New Zealand curriculum. We know that children achieve more when their parents are actively involved in their education. That's why Labour will require schools to report in plain language to parents about how their child is achieving, what progress they have made and agree on what the next learning steps are.

Schools will be required to use nationally recognised assessment tools and teacher judgment to inform parents, so they can be actively involved in their children's education.

Any move away from national’s standards, the rhetoric such as “raising the bar and aspirational achievement”, league tables, and the underlying school effectiveness agendas, is extremely welcome. While it needs to be acknowledged that there were political considerations involved on the drafting of this policy, it is also very clear that the battle for education has a long way to go, in order to excise every little piece of the ‘raising achievement’ cancer, so that a child’s true educational development becomes the focus, not just better “reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmetic.”

Recent correspondence with many people overseas, such as Phil Cullen in Australia, and those behind the United Opt Out website in the USA, has proven beyond doubt that national’s standards, and all that lie behind these, are part of an international agenda. This has come as rather a big shock to our USA colleagues, who were stunned to find out that both Australia, and New Zealand, two countries held in very high regard in US education circles, were being taken down the standards road.

To illustrate this, here is a comment from Yetta Goodman, internationally recognised authority on reading:

“How sorry to hear that the country that has been a model for curriculum that is constructivist and supported teachers to negotiate curriculum with their students since at least the 1930's is being influenced by the U.S. And your model produces better results (international tests) then most other countries. You are often listed in the the attack on schools in the U.S.

re: test scores as one of the highest scoring countries in the world. I remember when we were in New Zealand years ago, the curriculum being presented at that time was being circulated for a two year period so parents could respond to it as well as educational professionals. Please resist the imposition of high stakes tests. New Zealanders have all kinds of ways to evaluation/assess their students in their classrooms. Your pedagogy has been influential in establishing holistic teaching experiences for students in the U.S.?

Your post should help us all realize that the testing impositions used to make high stakes decisions are not simple issue just plaguing the U.S. The issues are global and we need to understand the underlying causes for such international responses to the education of our populations. We heard so many similar issues as are being raised in this blog being stated at the European Reading Association in Belgium this summer.”

The next two months will be crucial for the school experiences of today’s school children, for children still to start school, and those yet to be born.

National’s standards are a side road on the journey to a much worse destination!

What can you do?

• Join this Facebook group: National Standards Must Go.
• Follow this parent run website:Welcome to PROTECT (Parents' Rights On Their Educational Choices Today)
• Join the PROTECT Facebook page.

Share these links with others

Write to:

• The Prime Minister
• The Leaders of Labour, Green, Maori, and Mana political parties
• Your local member of Parliament
• Your local newspaper
• The New Zealand School Trustees Association.

Talk to as many people as possible:

• Two hundred thousand concerned voters will stop this.

Are you prepared to take up the battle? Are you able to debate from a very informed position?

If not, why?

• Too busy?
• Different priorities?
• Head in the sand?

What’s the worst that could happen?

Tragically, many of us will be able to say “I told you so.”

Let’s not go there.

Read more »

Posted in: Big Picture,Education,guest blogger,Ministry of Education,national standards

Mind Control from the Ministry of (Mis) Education

Mind control compliance 'helpers' are on the way!

Guest Blogger Allan Alach

A few days back two staff members from the Ministry of Mind Control, or in Newspeak, MiniMind (aka Ministry of Education) attended a BOT meeting to inform the BOT about all the good reasons for implementing national’s standards. Ostensibly this was supposed to be part of the negotiation process over the non-compliant charter, except that MiniMind preempted this through their ‘use these targets’ or else letter, deemed to take effect on the long scheduled day of the meeting.

One MiniMind employee had been given the ‘salesperson’ role. He ran through a Powerpoint presentation, supposedly developed for the school, except that after a few slides it was obvious that this was THE standard Minimind slideshow prepared to sell national’s standards to BOTs. As I’d resolved to restrain myself, I kept busy typing notes of the presentation and discussion, and have now objectively analysed these.

The presentation starting with listing the reasons given for national standards.

1. Information for parents.
2. Aimed at NCEA level 2.
3. Assisting in classrooms
4. Information to MOE about how NZ school system is working
5. Self review data

Comments

1. Existing tools, from the levels defined in the NZ curriculum, to the exemplars and matrices for all curriculum areas, provide all the information schools need to report to parents. The NZ Curriculum provides for expected levels of achievement in each year group. The difference is that the levels are in age and developmentally appropriate bands, while standards are set at about the 60 to 65% above average range.

2. The standards are targeted at NCEA level 2 and distributed down in equal sized steps from there. Two points have been raised by informed educators about this. The first is that no national debate or research has been carried out to substantiate (or not) the decision to use NCEA level 2 in this way. The second point is that equal distribution of every step down does not take into account that human development, whether physically, intellectually, or in maturation, is not linear nor regular and predictable, varying in every single child,

3. Existing tools provide for all the information needed to assist teachers in their classrooms. The summative (end point) aspect of standards is far less use than the formative (diagnostic) assessment tools used by teachers.

4. It is true that there are no systems to provide numerical data to the MOE on how the school system is working. However it can be argued that the 3 yearly ERO review process is able to identify schools where there are concerns, and the MOE already have intervention and support procedures in place to help these schools.

Extending this, it can be argued that schools who receive positive ERO reports are providing quality education for their pupils.If this is not true, then the role, function and effectiveness of ERO immediately comes into question. Watch this space?

The National Education and Monitoring Project (NEMP) funded by the government, and operated by Otago University, carried out systematic sampling of children's learning at Year and Year 8, in all areas of the curriculum, on a repeating cycle. Their reports, publicly available, were very effective at recording and analysing trends, up or down. NEMP has now been renamed and has a new function, focussing on literacy and numeracy. This will now mean that research based information, previously provided by NEMP, will no longer be available to support the wider curriculum. There are significant implications here for New Zealand education.


5. Existing tools are more than capable of providing all the information schools need to carry out effective self review.

On the basis of the list of points made at the start of the presentation, there is no compelling reason for national standards that would significantly enhance a school's education and assessment programmes.

Following on, the presenter discussed a wide range of issues throughout the presentation, and I shall now comment, again objectively, on some of the statements that he made.

✴ There is a wide range of school assessment capability across the country.

Obviously true, but to what extent? No data was provided to inform the audience as to the level of this, or the proportion of schools at various levels of effectiveness. This statement could be valid if there was one school doing extremely well and the bulk poorly, or vice versa. It was not possible to determine this one way or the other, so the statement has very low value.

The second issue that arises is that we can speculate that there will schools going very well, and schools doing poorly. Through ERO reports, schools with issues should be clearly identified and it would be reasonable to query why all schools are being required to comply with national standards on the basis of the claimed range of assessment capability.

✴ I am a big fan of standardised tests.

The relevance of linking personal views to support national standards can not be justified, in the same way as an opinion against standardised tests could not be used as an argument against national standards.

✴ Targets are used to drive a school's operation.

Under present and past school management philosophies, this is a correct statement. Targets have been required since about 2002 and schools have been required to report on these in a variance report as part of the annual financial reports.

This statement however does not of itself provide a reason why national standards are needed. It is clearly obvious that schools have set, and reported against, targets for many years.

✴ It would be a special kind of stupid to have national testing regimes (in answer to a question from a BOT member about this possibility).

Personal opinion. He is not qualified to comment on the possibility of tests being introduced in the future, as this is not the role of anyone in a Ministry regional office.

Tests may or may not be introduced in coming years. This will be a decision by the Minister of Education of the time, not the Ministry of Education.

✴ Your school is in a good position/doing well (repeated a number of times in different ways.)

This then raises the question of why do schools doing well need standards?What are the benefits to these schools? No information to inform these questions was provided.

✴ Aim to get 'below children' to make more than a year's progress in one year.

The aim is admirable.

This, however, then implies strongly that without national standards, these children would not make progress, and that before national standards, nothing was done for 'below' children.

No data was provided to support this nor to show how national standards would make a difference. There is a strong inference here, criticising schools and teachers for failing to identify and address the needs of these children in the time before national standards were introduced. This is not a situation that can be supported by data.

✴ Standards can be used to assist self review.

True. However, quality and informed school reviews has been successfully carried out by BOTs ever since their formation in 1989, without the need for standards.

✴ The regional manager wrote a letter instructing the BOT to insert defined targets.

The regional manager signed the letter. However the letter was virtually identical in format with those received by other BOTs. The deemed date that charters were to take effect has varied between schools and there is a pattern where this date has fallen before scheduled meetings with regional MOE officers.

✴ The MOE have a task force looking at the issue of league tables (in answer to a question from a BOT member about this possibility).

The task force was established by the Minister of Education. There is no representation from teacher and principal organisations. The one middle school principal on the task force has no (recent?) history of involvement with primary school organisations and certainly is not qualified to speak on their behalf. The members of the task force, by and large, have been proponents of national standards from the outset.

The speaker was not in a position to comment with any authority on the league table issue, one way or another.

The issue of concern is the Official Information Act. Unless a government is prepared to change this, then political observers/commentators believe that it will not be possible to stop media using the Act to access data. I understand that the same would apply today if media applied to any school, under the Act, for their national standards data.

On the basis of this presentation, the case to support the implementation of national standards to significantly enhance school operations or children's learning, in ways that were not achievable before standards were introduced, was not well made.

One is then left with the inevitable question:

If this is the best that MiniMind can produce to justify the introduction of national’s standards, what is the point of the whole exercise?

You tell me.

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Posted in: Assessment,Big Picture,guest blogger,national standards,Rants and Raves

Forget the Nanny State - we now have Big Brother

Guest blog by Allan Alach

Several years back we were bombarded with ‘nanny state’ rhetoric. Well, that has gone now,  and has been replaced by ‘Big Brother” from George Orwell’s book “Nineteen Eighty Four”. 

Orwell’s prediction of 1984 was rather accurate it seems, except for being 27 years too early.  From Orwell’s genius, we can see that the agency we know as the “Ministry of Education” (Education being the word used in the official language of Oceania, Newspeak) is actually a euphemism for “Ministry of Mind Control’, employing “Thought Police” to ensure compliance.

Poor Winston Smith. We can start to sympathise with his predicament.

So now ‘non-compliant’ schools have received what appears to be a pro-forma letter from their local office of the Ministry of Education. This states that as agreement has not been reached, the board is now required to amend its charter, to include provided target goals against the standards. These letters then specify the date that the amended charter will take effect. End of story.

Several issues spring out of these letters immediately. The most obvious one is the question of whether the MOE has obeyed the Education Act. This will require clarification through a legal process; however on the face of it, one wonders.

The Education Act states (63A(4) that if a school is in default regarding changing  its charter, ‘The Secretary must then negotiate with the board to resolve the matters concerned and, if the board and the Secretary are unable to reach agreement about the content of the school charter, the Secretary may require the board to amend the charter or updated charter.’

Negotiation is defined in the Oxford online dictionary as “discussion aimed at reaching an agreement.”

It would then seem plausible that a very good case could be made that the MOE process over charters does not meet this definition of negotiation. For one thing, it is rather apparent that there was only ever one outcome that would be acceptable to the MOE, and therefore ‘negotiation’ was impossible. Following on, it is implicit that negotiation takes time. The MOE’s processes also seem to have not provided for this.

The second issues relates to the date the amended charter is deemed to take effect. There are a number of cases, possibly many, where the specified date falls before scheduled meetings with the MOE to discuss charter issues. In which case, what is the purpose of these scheduled meetings? It can no longer be claimed that these meetings are part of any negotiations and that also would seem the question the legality of this process.

It is therefore plausible to wonder if the Ministry of Education has disregarded one section of the Education Act, in order to enforce charters on schools who are deemed to be in breach of another section of the Act. Challenging this in the courts would, I suspect, be an expensive process that would be beyond the finances of the affected schools. However the old saying "Not only must justice be done; it must also be seen to be done” would seem to be appropriate in this situation.  I hear that Island Bay School has laid a complaint with the Ombudsman over this and this will give a guideline for future action.

There is a third issue, potentially the most significant, hiding in the wings of this process. Every New Zealand state primary school, whether they voluntarily incorporated targets against standards, or did so reluctantly because of compliance requirements, and those who have been issued a charter against their wills, has now been required to follow nationally imposed charter objectives.

This effectively means that the concept of the self governing school, that has underpinned school operations since 1990, has now been set aside. The self governing school model was intended to allow local communities to have some input into the visions, policies and goals of their schools.

While this has always been restricted by various government policies, the current requirement to set targets against national standards, through degrees of compulsion, brings back centralised control of education that we’ve not seen for a very long time. Far more so, in fact, than the situation before Tomorrow’s Schools, when the Department of Education operated at arm’s length from the governments of the day. This is in contrast to the role of the MOE, which is to implement the policy of the government in power at any particular time.

This centralising of control over schools sends a very clear, and frightening signal, of what we may expect in coming years.

Have we seen the first shot in the dismantling of the Tomorrow’s Schools framework?  Have we seen the first shot in the dismantling of the New Zealand public school system that has existed since the 19th century?

Given the likely agenda of ‘school reform’ that will target ‘underachieving schools’ (this is the clear model being followed in the United States and England), the answer to these questions is yes, this is the first step in dismantling Tomorrow’s Schools and the public school system as we know it.

Again following the overseas patterns, we can expect attacks on the NZEI, blaming them for teacher ‘underperformance’ and protecting ‘poor teachers”, leading to strenuous efforts to break the collective agreement  and institute site based bargaining. This isn’t new - those with longer memories will remember the vicious employment negotiations of the 1990s.

England and USA have both used the ‘underachieving schools’ argument to justify the closure of these schools and their replacement by ‘Charter Schools’ in the USA and “Free Schools” in England. These are nominally meant to be community schools but before too long the corporates have stepped in. This results in corporate run schools, using government funding, as part of their business programmes. Standards and league tables are a key component in this process, and we can expect tests to replace OTJs in a couple of years.

To repeat: the influences from overseas are very clear. The rhetoric from the government here is near identical to that used in the USA (“raising the bar” for example) and so there is little doubt of the agenda. If the words like ‘school reform’ (or similar slogans) appear in the coming election campaign, then that will confirm this beyond doubt.

There are numerous sources of information on Charter and Free schools available online, but to get you started, here is a website about charter schools in the USA, and here is one about free schools in England. For comprehensive information about US education, the most followed person is Diane Ravitch.

Read these, and other similar sites carefully, as this model is very likely to be in our not too distant future. I’ve heard principals and teachers say that they are too busy to read this kind of ‘stuff’ or that some articles are ‘too long.’ Really? Are we professionals or just workers employed to do a job?

At the very least, everyone should read Kelvin Smythe’s Networkonnet, Phil Cullen’s Treehorn Express, and this Leading and Learning blog that Bruce Hammonds runs so well.

A USA group, with similar concerns for the future of public schooling, has established a website called United Opt Out National:The movement to end punitive public school testing. This is a new venture which is growing very fast, supported by key educators in the USA. Their associated Facebook page, “Opt out of the State test, is listed below.

After an approach from Phil Cullen,  a South Pacific Outreach page has now been set up on this site, to foster sharing and support between USA, Australia and New Zealand, in our joint battle to protect public schooling in all three countries. We hope that this will grow over time to include like minded groups facing the same battles in their own countries.

Over recent weeks, a variety of Facebook pages about standards based education have sprung up in New Zealand and the USA, and probably elsewhere. The hope is that concerned educators and parents will link together through this medium, to develop a world wide campaign to protect public education. Join in! If we all link arms we form a powerful movement! If we don’t work hard at this, then we know what the result will probably be.

Winston Smith fought back against ‘Big Brother”. What are you going to do?

New Zealand Facebook pages:

National Standards Must Go

Protect (Parents' Rights On Their Educational Choices Today)

Take A Stand Against National Standards

USA Anti-Standardised Testing Facebook pages:

OPT OUT OF THE STATE TEST: The National Movement

Uniting 4 Kids

Parents & Kids Against Standardized Testing

Fair Test

Read more »

Posted in: Big Picture,guest blogger,Leadership,Ministry NZCurric,national standards,Rants and Raves