Sharing the Addiction

I thought I would post some of the comments from a debate myself and a few other teachers have been having on the National party website over their new ’standards’ as part of the crusade for literacy and numeracy. Warning - this is a long post! I would love to hear your thoughts on this! Yes - this is a political post and it is fairly obvious where I stand on this but I think we should all be proud in New Zealand to stand by our convictions.

From the National party website:

National Party Crusade for Literacy and Numeracy. National will:

1. Set National Standards in literacy and numeracy.
2. Require every primary and intermediate school pupil to be assessed regularly against National Standards.
3. Require primary and intermediate schools to report to parents in plain English about how their child is doing compared to National Standards and compared to other children their age.
4. Provide targeted funding to assist primary and intermediate schools to give an extra hand to the pupils who aren’t meeting National Standards.
5. Refocus the Ministry of Education and the Education Review Office on supporting schools in the Crusade for Literacy and Numeracy.

Lyn Croft wrote:

There are national standards in literacy and numeracy. Every primary/intermediate school student is assessed very regularly. Schools do report home to parents in ‘plain English’ - although a number of caregivers do not read English. Yes, schools need extra funding to support students who are failing - more reading recovery teachers, more teachers to work with individuals/small groups, smaller class sizes and a teacher aide in every classroom.Special Needs students and students with learning needs miss out on funding, particularly when moving to secondary schools. Giving ORRS funding to those students with only very high needs discriminates against those who, with assistance, can reach their full potential. We need more funding to enable these students to be part of mainstream classes where appropriate, with the necessary support, enabling them to socialise with their peers. It’s called inclusive education.

Then I wrote:

I would like to support the comment made by Lyn Croft. There are MANY standards already in place for literacy and numeracy and schools are already testing against these regularly. To stick another layer of ’standards’ and associated testing on top of what we are doing already (which gives us very effective data) is in my mind repeating the mistakes of the UK and the US which are beginning to realise that their testing approach had little impact. Ask yourself why 83% of primary school teachers are opposed to this move. It is not because we are afraid of hard work - teachers in this country put in hours of work often in weekends and evenings, it is because we don’t see how your plans can add ANY value to what we are already doing and we believe that it will be destructive overall just as it has been overseas. This is something I would be prepared to strike with no pay over should a national government try to impose this on our education system! How about you consult with teachers and try to learn a bit more about what we ARE doing before bringing in a half baked idea like this one.

Jamin Lietze wrote:  (Twitter buddy. We did not talk about this beforehand so interested to see him here!)

I too support what Lyn Croft and Suzie Vesper have been stating about National’s idea to implement National Standards. IT IS NOT NEEDED.
This move in my mind would increase:
- surface learning
- Teacher and student stress
- administration time
It would build tension between schools/communities who would compete for more student enrollments.
I feel this is a “market” strategy that is being applied to our Education system and I don’t agree.

At this point, I Twittered about this policy and more Twitter friends went and commented on the site.

Dave Winter wrote

A preoccupation and focus on nationalised testing is likely to lower standards, demoralise some schools and students. “You can’t increase the length of a piece of string by measuring it”. Authentic assessment has its place; but should be to improve literacy (which itself needs to be redefined) not measure it. National leadership seems to feel we will have the right citizens if they can read, write and add well. Ooops please come up with policies for a future that will exist not a fast fading past.

Fiona McDonald wrote:

I agree with Lyn and Suzie. I can’t even begin to imagine what a nightmare it would be with unhealthy competition between schools to get the best test results! It would be like England with League Tables. To reward teachers with best practice sounds like a major can of worms! Would it reward those who teach to the test, or those who teach to inspire and empower? I can’t imagine anything that would cause friction on a staff more!

In reply to S. Anderson, I agree that more needs to be done to address dyslexia; John Key isn’t the first to come up with this! But do you know what is already being done to help children in schools? It seems to me that too many people judge schools and teaching methods on the ‘prehistoric’ methods that existed when they were a child. When I think back to my schooling it was definitely a ‘one size fits all’ education. It certainly isn’t like that these days in the classes at my school, or at any of the schools I know!

I strongly believe that simply pumping more money into the teaching isn’t the solution (although its always nice to be able to buy a bit more ICT and PE equipment!). We can teach until we are blue in the face AND until the cows come home, but if what we teach and model at school isn’t reflected in the home then it is a potentially losing battle.

In so far as managing the budgets for ‘at risk’ students, the major problem our school has had is that of immigrant families arriving with special needs children that automatically chew up our special needs budget. Bye bye extra reading groups, bye bye math booster classes and those ‘at risk’ students fall through the cracks. I understand that these families are looking for a better life for their families, but at the expense of our existing students? Then, after six months they often decide to move home…

*John Key do not add more testing*. Have you heard of NUMPA, snapshots, Asttle, eAsttle, Probe, Running Records, Arbs, Six year nets, Portfolios, reports, parent/teacher conferences, diagnostic assessment, formative assessment, summative assessment…

I seriously believe NZ will lose a lot of it’s greatest teachers should even more testing be introduced, leaving the mediocre ones to reap the rewards!

The site admin left this message on Fiona’s post:

No additional tests are involved with National’s policy, nor will there be national tests. From the text of the policy announcement: “National will require primary and intermediate schools to use assessment programmes that compare the progress of their pupils with other pupils across the country. Schools will choose from a range of tests, and there won’t be national exams.” Check:
national.org.nz/files/2008/Education_Policy_Crusade_for_Literacy.pdf ]

I replied to this admin note:

I note the admin statement in Fiona’s response. If you are not going to impose national testing on students other than what is already in place then I think you are being very misleading with the way you word this policy. When you say ‘National will require every primary and intermediate student to be assessed regularly against standards’ then this is an empty phrase since this is happening already. All schools are already regularly assessing against national standards and will continue to do so. How is your statement making this any different? It just sounds like rhetoric to me to make other people think that you would be responsible for some kind of major change when you actually would not be. I also want to hear more about these ’standards’. We have standards now that have been refined over a long period of time with consultation with schools - what would you do to change these? I also don’t see how you can bring in new ’standards’ and then say schools would need to assess against these new standards and then expect us to believe that there would be no changing to testing as we have it now.

Also, when reading the PDF, I find the statement about telling parents how children compare to other children incredibly dangerous. I think parents should be informed about the progress of their children against national norms but NOT in comparison to other children. For children to be ‘ranked’ in a class leads to all kinds of nasty dynamics between both parents and children and is damaging to the self esteem of children. It is certainly NOT going to help them improve their learning. Teachers know that there is a time and place for a certain amount of competition in schools and we use it but with caution. Too much competition can completely demoralise some children and by ranking children against each other, that is the kind of environment the kids would be operating within.

I should point out in the interests of transparency, that there are 10 steps that National plan to take and I have only talked about the top five. I have no issues with the other points. So - what do you think?

Tags: nzelection

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