That would seem to be information that actually could be potentially useful if made available in the right way.

http://assessment.tki.org.nz/Assessment-tools-resources/Alignment-of-assessment-tools-with-National-Standards

I remember that awkward moment. All those hours put into OIA-ing the new 'standards'…

And STAR (for maths?) and ASTTLE. All established and moderated. The idea that there weren't any measures for achievement before national standards is pervasive and wrong.

One thing that didn't make the cut of the discussion in last week's show was my question about why no one has…

There used to be something similar. I have strong memories of taking written language and maths aptitude tests at the beginning of at least two years of my primary schooling, using standardised-format answer sheets. Someone out there will…

Chat to a Finnish " Expert on Education Reform" who spoke at Teachers conference in Rotorua. Finland: No Nat standards. Education system based on equity not achievement. Controlled at the municipality level......

Finishes with:

"Finland lacks the extreme excellencies and the extreme…

If we use Finland as a shining example, then no. Teachers set grades based on their own…

It really is looking like a system designed badly enough to be an argument for national standards testing. Oh the reason this data is no good is because it's based…

High error rate in National Standards marking

Sheeting the blame home to teachers making "errors" is, of course, rather missing the point. This doesn't happen with properly moderated…

But the Herald sent their reporters to an intro to statistics course! So they must know what they're talking about.

One of the bands is 6-10 year old

Looking at that test Ben it's very basic vocab recognition exercise and not in anyway a comprehensive indicator, in the test pdf itself the results are perhaps too precise (to the month). Fortunately cursory googling reveals a range of tests. I imagine…

Classic, there you go. One of the bands is 6-10 year old. Which means statistically their progress is lost in the noise for several years at a time, but…

My first port of call on the what-to-do front would be professional educators, though. His teacher, probably, who would almost certainly know where he was at, and might also know why, from long observation and experience.

Certainly Ben. I recall being given extensive standardised reading comprehension tests on a number…

Sort of. You can find out what your kids are capable of pretty quickly, but knowing whether that is keeping up with their age group is not something you can do in isolation. Whether that's important is debatable, but I'm always personally interested. I…

The quickest way to find out how well your child is reading and writing is to have them read something to you or write something. Ask the kid

That is so (too) fucking reasonable Jeremy that it doesn't meet the histrionics quota for significant media/national/blog outrages. You are damned right…

Interesting. Naturally Parata 'disagrees' with the international evidence while refusing to be interviewed.

Ta for including the audio length too – figure it helps people decide whether they can commit to listening…

Reporters. They all look the same.

Wasn't it the Herald's Jonathan Milne who said that, as Steve noted above?

The problem I have is the circular logic of the journalists. A passionate desire to want to raise education standards yet an inability or refusal to the understand the math of statistics. Those books are quite hard to read, well they look harder than they are. They…

As a parent I am not in any real position to judge the requirements necessary for the best education of my child – in the same manner that I am…

I can see the NZEI & PPTA going to the Press Council over the whole thing. It's not the teachers' fault that social…

There’s something insidious about the way John Hartevelt uses language. He writes without irony of his “balanced approach”, of usefulness and fairness, he hints at his striving…

And once you'd considered confounding factors — small classes at special…

Just watched the media3 interview with Hartevelt, Milne and Ng again. Some observations.

– media3 should allow for longer interviews. I would like to have seen Keith with more opportunity to explain his points. Not that he didn’t do well, but Johnathan and John did…

It’s not just important, it’s the law. Something that shouldn’t really need to be repeated, but as long as the penalties for flouting it makes the proverbial slap on the wrist with a wet bus ticket look like an all…

I have long suspected the US education system was designed to maintain an ignorant underclass to fill the gap left by the abolishment of slavery. Could we be doing the same thing?

And are we creating a dual-stream society; those with critical analysis skills and…

I'm betting you won't be able to restrain yourself.

Good point. We seem to have measures to moderate some of those consequences but not others.

John actually took no convincing.

And it's also worth noting that they made the data downloadable for everyone – critics and competitors even – to use.

I think there's something in that.

I think there is a parallel to be drawn with free speech absolutism. A commitment to free speech brings costs to society as well as benefits, in hate speech and lies and calls of fire in crowded theatres. Likewise,…

The possibility of misinterpretation has never been a reason for withholding under the OIA.

I've had judicial decisions complaining about this. There's basically a judicial direction (not often followed, unfortunately) that psychologists should not use the phrase "mild intellectual disability".

It's an important and complex problem. There's so much possibility of misinterpretation or hyperbolic reporting, especially if the metadata…