Hard News: Research Fail
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From that fascinating Crooked Timber post that Stephen linked to upthread:
Harris has estimated how many schools remain high flying over time, and what the characteristics of those schools are. Using a sample of 18,365 schools he finds that when the definition of high performing is changed to require consistency over time fully 93% of schools identified as high-performing for a year drop out of the category. And whereas low poverty schools are only 3 times more likely to be high performing than high poverty schools on the single-year definition, they are 22 times more likely to be high-performing on the definition that requires consistency over time. Using data on schools with high minority populations he finds that, on the more demanding definition, the “likelihood that a low-poverty-low-minority school is high-performing is 89 times greater than for a high-poverty-high-minority school”.
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Now comes "Islander" ( in his 1865th post)
Gordon - just quietly - I'm pretty sure Islander is a she, not a he. It's not the best idea to assume a person's gender on a forum such as this. There are actually quite a few of us laydeez around here...
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Sorry, mate: I just feel I have tuned in, at times, to a Leighton Smith talkshow (the comments, not your generally well-structured open-minded discussion-leads).
It would help if you didn't append your apology with yet another insult.
So far as I can see, nothing in the discussion warranted some of your responses. I'd like you to show more respect to others here, even when your ideas are challenged.
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there's some good research on charter school systems (including the huge Stanford study I noted upthread), and overall it's not that encouraging.
Indeed. Just reading a profile of Arne Duncan (unfortunately, subscription required) the current Education Secretary in the US. It looks like he's full-steam ahead in favour of charter schools anyway.
Not on the basis of very good evidence- as even supportive academics acknowledge. But rather on the basis of his own experience of school and his mother's truly remarkable success in that area. Anecdote and feeling trumping evidence again?
One thing that's indisputable: teachers with passion, nous and commitment make a difference (there's a bit of research coming out that indicates it can be a very big difference indeed).
But: you can't legislate, or necessarily buy- commitment and passion.
You can nurture it, and it can be passed on. Exceptional teachers are out there, and they can inspire their colleagues and their students- to take up teaching.
The new primary curriculum, fresh off the press, has helped enthuse and motivate teachers.
But while you can't legislate- or in any easy way, 'incentivise'* this passion and commitment, I think you can dampen it with hasty policy or ill-advised legislation. And there does seem to be an flood-tide of the hasty and ill-advised.
*money does help attract good quality teachers, and retain them. But a competitive system of remuneration seems unlikely to produce more exceptional teachers. -
I am currently researching the second 25 years of television in New Zealand (1985-2010)
Marvellous - is that following on from Robert Boyd-Bell's one?
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The Picot Committee's report recommended that individual school communities should encourage their schools to be innovators in similar ways, and that the money saved, by slicing through bureaucracy, should be given to the locally-elected school board to achieve their innovative goals..
The money wasn't saved through slashing bureaucracy-it came through a lower teacher salary bill. A school round here in the trial suddenly had young and inexperienced teachers filling positions as they became vacant. Sure we need them in our schools but we also need a mix of experience in our staff. Call it democracy if you like but Boards of Trustees were going to be put in difficult situations-experienced teacher and no resources vs inexperienced teacher and a new classroom. Because you could see that down the track the actual value of funding/vouchers would be eroded to a level below current funding. Or maybe I'm just paranoid.
In my view, it was a great disaster that the teacher unions united to stop this kind of initiative because they opposed "bulk funding" for individual schools.
Well they would wouldn't they if their member's renumeration, job conditions and job security were at risk.
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A couple of quick points - hopefully to see things in context:
1. I don't advocate "learning all the history" of television in a day or a weekend or writing a 25-year history over a short time. But anyone wanting to take a course in 21st-century "video editing" (and that is the context) does not need to spend months or a year learning about the history of television. If he needs it for some sort of "standardised test" that includes the history of television, he or she can read any key points quickly and then get straight on to learning how to actually edit video with all the new technologies and methods available.
2. On the report of the "Inter-Party Working Group on Social Choice", the major concept it advocates revolves around "personalized learning plans and pathways". I strongly support that "concept" (but disagree strongly with many of the report's recommendation to achieve that goal). My two favourite private schools (both out of this country) have excellent but different methods of setting up such programs; my favourite high school (a public one in Britain) has another brilliant scheme. And two of my favourite New Zealand schools (Discovery 1 primary and Unlimited high school in Christchurch) were actually set up so that each student could follow through a personalised learning program, using "all of Christchurch as a classroom" and (online) all the world. Both those latter schools are "state schools" set up under the "Special Designation Category" provisions of the New Zealand Education Act. (Although I consider I made only a minor contribution to it, I was chuffed to be invited to be a member of the Estblishment Board of Discovery 1; and I still love taking overseas school leaders, state and private, to visit both the Christchurch schools.
3. I have found principals and teachers at all the five schools mentioned here ("state owned" and "privately owned") to be highly dedicated and damned great at their jobs. (Incidentally I do not equate "state" and "public" as being identical)
4. It would be great if, in the continuing NZ debate on "national standards" and "personalised learning", the Minister of Education and all political parties here could look at many "best practice" examples, such as those mentioned here, in an open-minded way.
5. In case of any doubt, I personally challenge the idea, as stated in the "Multi-Party Working Group's Report", that some 5% of students are "gifted and talented". Each of the founders of the five schools mentioned here believes, as I do, that all children are potentially talented, but in different ways, and great schools help them develop those talents inside a broad holistic education.
6. After the adoption of the "Tomorrow's Schools" report, all New Zealand schools became "charter schools". Even such a simple term as that (even words such as "national standards") can have different meanings in different countries. The International Baccalaureate Organisation, incidentally, was formed was simply to make sure that no "state school system" in future should follow the example of the Nazi and Fascist Governments in insisting that only their version of history was taught in "state" schools. Instead, all schools should encourage an open-minded search for the truth.
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... low poverty schools are only 3 times more likely to be high performing than high poverty schools on the single-year definition, they are 22 times more likely to be high-performing on the definition that requires consistency over time. Using data on schools with high minority populations he finds that, on the more demanding definition, the “likelihood that a low-poverty-low-minority school is high-performing is 89 times greater than for a high-poverty-high-minority school”.
But you see attacking poverty and racism isn't what National is about.
TOUGH ON EDUCATION. TOUGH ON THE CAUSES OF EDUCATION.
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Giovanni, in his 4020th post to Russell's website
That takes me back to the powerful debating skills exhibited by David Garrett on this here blog, except you appear to be a lot more verbose. Oh well.
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Marvellous - is that following on from Robert Boyd-Bell's one?
Sacha: yes, that is my starting point. I was originally motivated by the realisation that the 50th anniversary of the first official transmission is this year--and curious that there seemed to be little attention being paid to such a milestone. We now have John Bates 7-part doco series screening later this year and I am developing ways of recording responses to this, and other ways people can write of their experiences and memories of the second 25 years of television in New Zealand. Keep watching this spot!
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But anyone wanting to take a course in 21st-century "video editing" (and that is the context) does not need to spend months or a year learning about the history of television.
Yes, but I am reminded of a colleague's comment that learning to use Microsoft Word is not the same as creative writing. Technical skills and the expression of them are thin and under-nourished unless you have the opportunity to know and appreciate the rich heritage of what has gone before ie the 110 years of film-making; the 70+ years of television making; the centuries of literature... My experience is that many media-competent students have technical skills, but nothing of interest to say with them. It is not necessarily their fault--a 18 year old with great Photoshop or FinalCutPro abilities often has not had enough life experience--with all its flux and flows, curiosities and contradictions-- to construct anything of interest beyond him/herself.
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Hmmmm. I'm still not sure if learning the history is useful for all students.
And I'm still trying to get my head around the fact that Islander is a woman.
Just goes to show that t'internet (as Fred Elliot used to call it) transcends the gender differences we assume there are in people's writing style.
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4. It would be great if, in the continuing NZ debate on "national standards" and "personalised learning", the Minister of Education and all political parties here could look at many "best practice" examples, such as those mentioned here, in an open-minded way.
It's a continuing disappointment to me that we have no equivalent to Unlimited here in Auckland --it might have been the place for my bright but (very) difficult-to-teach younger Asperger son. (A number of PA readers already have children at Unlimited.)
People tried hard (and it worked for our older boy), but the lack of anything for us in the system for our younger son is a source of anger and frustration to me. I hope Giovanni has better luck with his daughter, who is also ASD, and that he does not find -- as is the case for some parents who approach some of the trendier schools in Auckland -- that a child who is different isn't welcome.
So I have powerful reasons to wish for alternatives -- but that doesn't mean I should welcome any alternative.
The systems cited glowingly in the working group's paper have significant and demonstrable problems. Yes, 17% of US charter schools provide a superior education to the public schools there -- but 37% are more or less disastrous. These numbers matter.
I think my suspicion of competitive "school choice" models is justified, and I'm tired of seeing teacher demonised.
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I suspect that tying the quality of university research output to primary and secondary education in the same country is a bit of a non sequiteur anyway. Most Ivy League colleges have about one quarter to one fifth of their student populations made up of international students, none of which would have directly benefitted from the US' approach to primary/secondary education.
Although I can't find more fine-grained stats online, I don't think it's unreasonable to suspect that international student numbers are even higher in postgraduate research programmes and in the hard sciences. Happy to be proved wrong on that one, though.
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John Keys step change last Chinese New Year.
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People tried hard (and it worked for our older boy), but the lack of anything for us in the system for our younger son is a source of anger and frustration to me. I hope Giovanni has better luck with his daughter, who is also ASD, and that he does not find -- as is the case for some parents who approach some of the trendier schools in Auckland -- that a child who is different isn't welcome.
Lucia will go to a primary school that we know to be very accepting, and we are confident they'll do their darndest. But it's not what you'd call a trendy school, and we are aware of how some of those have dealt with families in our situation.
After primary, oh, that's just going to be fun to find out.
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My ASD cousin did very well at Wellington East Girls, Gio.
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Geoff: In context again . . .
The "film editing" context was in comparing some of the state "institutes of technology" with such private IT trainers as Media Design School in Auckland which (a) encourages all its potential students to get some hands-on job experience first, in one of the media-areas, such as a junior in a television agency, video company or other similar areas, and then (b), once sure of what is the intended chosen career, to then learn to specialise in that (generally after age 20) at the Design School—in much shorter than the "state" polytech courses. As a result, about 95% of all students receive good job offers before they qualify, and the rest are fully employed. (Media Design School does not teach only video editing, but a wide range of high-tech media design skills.)
Incidentally, I'm involved with the (privately owned) University for Advancing Technology in Arizona, and have frequently made known to them what I consider to be the superior education provided by Auckland's MediaDesign School. The NanYang (state) Polytechnic is also the best institute of technology I personally have visited anywhere in the world.
I do not oppose or make blanket criticisms of state institutes of technology, but I do criticise the "bums on seats" state blanket payment systems to all institutions when, for many learners, they can learn well in much shorter times than the prescribed three years (or whichever).
Incidentally (without lauding "older days") all journalists in my era did all their training on the job (as did nurses), and, in the case of journalists, a "four-year cadetship" could be compressed greatly, depending on ones competence and application (in the era before Polytechnic Schools of Journalism). Certainly our concentrated "real life" training on the job more than took care of the "experience" factor that Geoff Lealand so rightly advocates. Perhaps funny: but we never thought of our training being "private". Most of mine, in fact, was on the then Labour daily, the Southern Cross, which was mainly owned by trade union shareholders. But almost invariably, young journalists then tried to move from big city to little city (in my case New Plymouth) and then to a small country town (Dargaville) to make sure we broadened our real-life experience.
Ask some of the remaining older journalists still around, such as Gordon McLauchlan and Dave Lawson, and I think you'll find that most, and perhaps all, are much more in favour of on-the-job training for young journalists than Polytechnic Schools of Journalism. We did, however, obtain our "skills training" (shorthand, typing — the equivalent to today's multimedia skills) from outside providers, mostly private schools.
Good luck for your history of television—where my own background includes working for both state-owned channels at different times and producing series as an outside contractor (with other "private" freelancers), funded by state-owned New Zealand on air but screened on one of the "state-owned entity" channels. All of which might explain my experience of good (Radio New Zealand National) and poor (the current state of TVNZ's current affairs or lack of such) in state-owned broadcasting, compared with the good (most TV3 News) and "poor" (much of private radio talkback programs) in the "privately-owned" broadcasting sector.
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Re Russell's comments on Unlimited and Discovery 1 and some of the schools visited by the "Inter-Party Working Group): I've written to the group members mentioning my surprise that the Christchurch schools were not visited by them — and recommending that much better" personalised learning plans" are operating in existing schools in New Zealand and elsewhere, without the (to me) rather strange recommendations in the group's report.
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Sorry for the thread-jack, and I'm sure Russell will have a lot more to say about RNZ soon enough, but Sue Kedgley really has to stop telling lies of omission:
Tempers flared at times during the meeting, as National MPs reacted angrily to repeated questioning from Green MP Sue Kedgley about whether Dr Coleman had threatened to sack the Radio NZ board or interfered with operational matters.
Ms Kedgley quoted a document stating that the board could be replaced if it failed to find a solution, but the paper in question was from the Ministry of Culture and Heritage and offered generic advice to the minister ahead of a meeting with the Radio NZ directors.
Ms Kedgley then read a quote from the minister in yesterday's Herald, in which he said, "If boards don't play ball, at the end of the day [replacing them] is the ultimate sanction", but she omitted "but we're nowhere near that stage".
It's actually an incredibly serious allegation to lay on any Broadcasting Minister, and you'd think Sue would know that.
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3410,
If that's a lie of omission, then so is almost anything.
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Craig gives a masterclass is disingenousness, since even with the omitted phrase the Minister's quote was about as clear a threat as "lovely premises you have here - shame if something were to happen to them - not that it's likely to of course."
ETA: the "masterclass" bit refers to how Craig presented the item on Facebook I guess. Still.
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Yeah, but how you gonna build a Facebook group and sell those caps by telling the truth?
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Let's parse the text, then...
"If boards don't play ball, at the end of the day [replacing them] is the ultimate sanction but we're nowhere near that stage.
versus
"If boards don't play ball, at the end of the day [replacing them] is the ultimate sanction.
IMO, both statements contain an element of threat. Why would a minister make such a statement, if not to convey an implicit threat ?
Good on Sue for drawing attention to this. I note that it is getting excellent coverage at RNZ, so perhaps those who work there, and actually know what's going, on agree that there is something to this story ?
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It was delicious to hear John Boscawen (ACT Spokesman for Broadcasting) lose his rag on Morning Report this a.m., whilst being interviewed with Sue Kedgely by Geoff Robinson. No link unfortunately.
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