Hard News: Standards Matter
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@tim:
learning is a life-long, ongoing and pleasurable experience that is not purely measured in numbers or statistics
Yes!
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Thanks tim- and Gordon. Inspiring.
Strikes me something odd is going on, orright. Look at this:Finnish students have come out number one in the three international assessment tests published since 2000: in reading-literacy, science and maths. New Zealand rates number 3 in reading-literacy, fourth in science and ninth in maths.
- in any serious calculation, how does this warrant a grand-standing "teachers are useless and failing us" argument? If you add in the (serious, and bloody difficult to address) "long-tail" of 20% under-achievement- and our lowish (by OECD standards) per capita income, we should be pretty proud of these figures.
If Key and Co boosted us somehow to up to 3rd, 4th or even 9th in per capita income, wouldn't they be crowing and beating their chests?
So let's apply Key's statements to their friends in the business sector. NZ is rated one of the easiest places in the world to do business. If those businesspeople and chamber of commerce types weren't so lazy and incompetent- and busy protecting their patches and bachs- we might just get our per capita income up to 9th (our lowest ranking of the three international educational standards.)
Then we'd have a heap more cash for education. We might even finish off the Finnish. -
To repeat: 21st-century literacy is Peter Jackson literacy
Children, unit one this term is going to be about tax avoidance.
NZ is rated one of the easiest places in the world to do business. If those businesspeople and chamber of commerce types weren't so lazy and incompetent- and busy protecting their patches and bachs- we might just get our per capita income up to 9th (our lowest ranking of the three international educational standards.)
I like the way Rob thinks!
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Thank you Russell for your post and to everyone for the discussion. And thank you to Tim Kong for his post explaining so well what it feels like to be a teacher caught up in this issue.
Back in December 2008 as a newcomer to PAS, I followed the discussion as Parliament debated national standards under urgency and I am thankful that we are again getting the in-depth comment and analysis that is needed to work out what is best for our students growing up in the 21st century.
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Russell, the number of new people contributing is a real testiment to your post.
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Many thanks for that plugin Tim. Works a treat...and just as well...I was really missing Mr Stewart.
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This is the first time I have joined one of these on-air discussion forums. But it seems to me the debate is veering off the key "national standards" debate and into all sorts of obscure side alleys.
Gordon, this place does love diversions but we get there in the end. Thank you for bringing your considerable expertise to share, and for the Chinese delegation story. That's the real cost to our children and grandchildren of getting this wrong.
And cheers to Russell for braving the sewer over the weekend. I joined the comparatively refined discussion at the Labour party blog Red Alert across a few threads, informed by Trevor Mallard's experience as Minister of Education.
A highlight was principal Pat Newman injecting some facts. Another commenter linked to the actual ERO report which I haven't had time to read yet.
However, there was determined ignorance on display from some commenters who invoked the truthiness Tim mentioned. It will be mighty tricky to address this policy area without dismissing the real fears of parents who still trust that their leaders are not lying to them. Or arguments from others who agree with the real agenda.
Hard to beat this classic exchange at the end of a Kiwibog thread:
# expat (2966) Says:
February 5th, 2010 at 9:09 pmYep, there is risk in change. There is also risk in continuing to churn out 20% of school leavers who are functionally illiterate and innumerate.
# Luc Hansen (957) Says:
February 6th, 2010 at 1:24 amInternational surveys do not support your comment. It’s a myth.
# expat (2966) Says:
February 6th, 2010 at 7:36 am73% of parents agree with me.
[links to Herald minipoll] -
Hard to beat this classic exchange at the end of a Kiwibog thread:
"Facts are stupid things." - Ronald Reagan
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@Tim-Couldn't have said it better. It is good to be back but I feel it's going to be hard work this yearand somewhat distracting from our main role as teachers.
@Gordon and others-You may like this blog by Taranaki educationalist Bruce Hammonds. He covers a lot of points you make in his posts and despairs somewhat about the direction being taken. -
@Sacha
Hard to beat this classic exchange at the end of a Kiwibog thread:
LOL! Thanks for the clip. Couldn't have found a better example of the what illiteracy can mean.
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Tim, Mikaere, Gordon and all - thank you! I am working up a blog from an anecdotal perspective about the effects of No Child Left Behind, as we have experienced them, and you are all absolutely on point about what is wrong with this set-up.
Instead of fighting what it is - we need to get on with being better than it.
On that note, I found this article inspiring.
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Thanks for the clip. Couldn't have found a better example of the what illiteracy can mean.
We should put it on posters: study, kids, if you don't want to end up like this Kiwiblog commenter.
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Tim, Mikaere, Gordon and all - thank you! I am working up a blog from an anecdotal perspective about the effects of No Child Left Behind, as we have experienced them, and you are all absolutely on point about what is wrong with this set-up.
I do think there are extremely significant differences between No Child Left Behind and what's being introduced here -- most notably, the absence of a central test.
Standards could be a useful tool, but have been oversold and rushed in for political ends, and, as I noted, will become something destructive when some arrogant media organisation publishes the first league table. NCLB was just a terrible idea in the first place.
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Assessment and evaluation is not such a problem in the primary and secondary sectors; I reckon it is more of a problem in the tertiary sector. When I first turned up at my university, I asked 'what are your processes for assessment?' and was handed a one page scale of numerical marks/letter grades. To this day, despite years of marking and assessment, I couldn't honestly adequately to a challenge from a student who might ask "what is the difference between an A- and B+ grade?". I might be able to, in a very subjective fashion, but not in the same way Excellence/Merit/Achieved is explained and defined in NCEA, for example. Or in the feedback that primary students get.
Of course, at university, we do have the freedom to develop more sophisticated assessment and we do so in Screen & Media Studies eg visual essays, group presentations, peer assessment, self-assessment, external moderation but this does require extra work. Last week we had a e-Learning day at the uni and it was a rare (too rare) opportunity to talk about assessment and learning styles.Good to have Gordon join our discussion. I have said it before--PAS is the very best place for informed opinion and enlightened discussion to be found in this country.
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For some reason this discussion reminds me of Hard Times by Dickens
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I am still very concerned about the effects of this new regime on students with autism and other 'special' needs. As a consequence of this post I wrote on humans last year I was offered a meeting with Ministry of Education officials to reassure me and other autism advocates that it was about assessment that schools already did and not testing (the formal test situation can be extremely stressful for some autistic students and certainly doesn't assess their knowledge), and that schools that did such testing would be reprimanded by ERO.
So I was surprised to read in the recent National Party promotion of this policy, John Key (photographed with three children - two in their private school uniforms), telling parents they will be lucky to have this 'testing'.
No wonder there is confusion.
Additionally, the software for those new plain language reports with the Plunket-style graph (to get around those 'sugar coated' and 'politically correct' reports that parents get now, according to the NP leaflet), will apparently not be available till next year.
Sensible option, one would think, would be to delay, pilot, reassess.
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Deep Red asks: Can anyone compare similarities & differences with the No Child Left Behind Act? Gordon Dryden responds:
Basically, America's "No Child Left Behind" Act is based on "US education" being mesmerised by "standardised testing".
This has its roots in the "school curriculum" at nearly all US state and district K-12 schools ("kindergarten" through 12th grade, with "kindergarten" in the US being more the equivalent to New Zealand's entrant classes at primary or elementary school).
Thus at nearly all US public schools each year's "curriculum" divides each day into individual subjects (similar to most traditional high schools). And "success", from the earliest grades, is based on examination results, testing students on knowledge or recall of each "subject". Thus "reading" is a separate subject, and is tested as such.
This means that year-by-year textbooks become the basis for nearly all class teaching. And "teaching to the test" becomes the basis for most teaching.
But "the plot thickens". In two major states, California and Texas, the subject-based textbooks are ordered by the state governments and provided to all students. These, then, tend to become the "textbooks of choice" for other states. This results in some "unusual twists", particularly in subjects such as history and how the texts cover the US civil war (or "war between the states"). For example, it's an open secret that, to get a history textbook accepted in Texas, Sam Houston's photo has to be given equal prominence to President Lincoln.
(As an aside, the State Government of California is almost bankrupt and, in one effort to save money, has decreed that, from last year, all textbooks will be digital, with a saving of more than US $400 million a year).
As well as subject courses being the core of US elementary schooling, students' admission to "college" (immediately after high school) is generally based on SAT scores. Over the years these initials have variously stood for "Scholastic Assessment Test", "Scholastic Aptitude Test" and now "Scholastic Reasoning Test". This is a "standardised" written and multiple-choice-questioning test. And its critics say it also forces US high schools to "teach to this test": and thus to encourage simple memorisation of test-answers rather than broad-based thinking, reasoning, research and communications abilities.
New Zealand, since the late 1930s, when C E Beeby became New Zealand's Director of Education, has — at primary-school level — been based more on developing each child's total ability to become a self-acting, self-motivated learner. (For historians, C E Beeby's autobiography, "The Biography of an Idea", published by the NZ Council of Educational Research, is great reading.) Beeby and his wife also played a big part in developing early childhood centres in New Zealand — again where young children learn by doing, and learning through all their senses. (Our high schools have largely carried on the English tradition of separate subject-courses — but based on each child assumed to start high school already an enthusiastic learner, as a result of the "whole child" approach to primary schooling.)
To be fair to the current New Zealand Government, it stresses that it does not want to introduce such "standardised testing" in New Zealand. Its policy is the subject to the present New Zealand debate; and, in another contribution too it (on these pages) I have set out what I see as some of the conflicts between it and the introduction of the new New Zealand Curriculum Guidelines.
One of the best articles on that new curriculum appeared over two pages in The Press, Christchurch, on March 20, 2008"
A-Plus for Inquiry" I think it should be essential reading for the present debate. Here it is (and I played no part in its writing — although I endorse it strongly, even though I personally prefer the shorter International Baccalaureate global curriculum guidelines for primary, middle and high schools):A-PLUS FOR INQUIRY
New Zealand schools get a new curriculum next year and it is winning approval from many quarters, writes JOHN McCRONE.
What is the capital of Ethiopia? Which year was the Flagstaff war? What is the chemical formula for sulphuric acid?
A generation ago, we might have expected educated people to carry such facts around in their heads. Now we would say forget it, just Google it.
The world is not merely changing, but changing at an accelerating rate. Information is growing exponentially.
In 1900, a scientist could pretty much keep on top of every important development as only 9000 research papers were published in any year. By 1950, it was 90,000. By 2000, it was 900,000.
Today, drinking from this well of knowledge would be like trying to sip from the Huka Falls. Every 24 hours another 4000 papers are churned out.
A good job all this human wisdom now goes online because even university libraries have long since given up trying to accommodate the flood. They do not have the shelf-space. And extrapolate the curve 10 or 20 years into the future and you can see what a hopeless task faces our children.
Some parents do not understand this phenomenon yet. Just look at the rough ride given to the NCEA exams, the constant calls to go back to basics.
But it is the reason why the Ministry of Education is about to tear up its old curriculum. Next year, with the adoption of the new curriculum, New Zealand is plunging wholeheartedly into a different style of learning. And the rest of the world is jealous.
Top Canadian educationist and director of the Council for Human Development, Stuart Shanker, of York University, is here on a whistlestop tour of the country's schools.
We meet at Rangi Ruru, the private Christchurch girls' school. Through the window, we see young women toss rugby balls back and forth. But Shanker spent the morning at low-decile Linwood Avenue Primary and to him, the view was not really that different.
Shanker says he is bowled over with what we are attempting here. New Zealand is already top five in the world for its quality of education -- something he is puzzled to find we do not seem too aware of.
"It's been kind of surprising that New Zealanders don't seem to see that they have an outstanding education system. Here I am looking at all the great things you're doing and the only questions I seem to get asked are what are we doing wrong?"
Ad FeedbackBut it is a fact. Shanker says just check the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment results which place our school children near top of all English-speaking nations for science, mathematics and reading.
Now we are going to be the first country anywhere with an educational curriculum specifically designed for a knowledge economy, for the internet age. "What you're doing is what other people are saying -- you know, at a think-tank level. But you're actually doing it. And doing it at the population level, so every kid benefits. I mean no-one else has gone near that far," he says.
So what is this curriculum all about? For such a revolution, things have gone rather quiet since the slim document was released in November.
The reason for the silence has been the new curriculum appears to be that rare beast -- a radical policy change which has met with almost universal approval. Everyone from teaching unions to business leaders are saying it is a job well done.
Mark Treadwell, an e-learning consultant and member of the curriculum's review group, says it would only be natural to expect moans. Teachers are going to have to put in a lot of extra hours to prepare. And problems may arise once theory begins to be put into practice.
"But people have been going rah-rah. No-one's complaining. They've been saying this is fantastic, it's what we dreamt of as teachers," says Mark Treadwell.
The old state school curriculum, which covers what pupils are expected to learn in both their primary and secondary years, had become an enormous tick-list of topic points to be taught. Facts to be crammed into small heads, says Treadwell.
Each year, new essentials seemed to be added and teachers were rushing through course work so they did not get marked down by school inspectors for skipping mandated items.
The new curriculum goes in the opposite direction. It is light on details, emphasising broad principles and flexibility. The thick manuals have been thrown out.
Indeed, the new curriculum is written in such wholesome tones that those with an old-fashioned view of education -- the chant-your-times-tables, sit still and shut up brigade -- will find it positively toe-curling.
There is a vision statement that speaks of creating confident, connected, lifelong learners. The new curriculum lays down principles like excellence, equity, cultural heritage and coherence. There is a long list of values to be fostered, such as integrity, respect and care for the environment.
And there are five key competencies which our education system is now meant to teach. These are the ability to manage self, relate to others, participate and contribute to the community, think clearly, and be comfortable with language, symbols and text.
Yes, it sounds more like a bunch of hopeful New Year's resolutions. But Treadwell says it is bang on for many reasons.
Take a step back, he says. The old education system was designed for the print age. You read books and memorised the facts. There was a premium on how much you could store in your head. And clerk or carpenter alike, good hand-writing and quick arithmetic would get you ahead in life.
Another big difference was that children learnt values and basic life skills at home. Parents were not working all hours and had time to talk. There were no chatrooms or PlayStations to distract. Modern life and the modern workplace have irrevocably changed and so a new kind of education is required.
"The internet has made a fundamental shift of the kind we haven't seen since the 1450s when the printing press was invented. And we're only a few years into it. The transformations it will make over the next 10 or 15 years are going to be stunning," says Treadwell.
It is all about the quantity of information and the ease of tapping it.
"This shifts us from a `just in case' kind of framework -- learning stuff just in case it might one day be useful -- to a `just in time' framework," he says.
But a Google-based approach to life then requires a new set of "meta-skills". Treadwell says children have to become more expert at evaluating sources, more questioning, more able to apply the knowledge they glean.
Some schools, such as Christchurch's Cobham Intermediate, have already pioneered classes with this inquiry style of learning. In inquiry-based teaching, children are encouraged to work in teams. They choose their own study projects and present their findings to the class. They are not pinned to chairs and forced to work through a textbook but go out into the real world to gather information from businesses and community groups.
Treadwell says it sounds dangerously like having fun. People are fearful about children having too much control over what they learn. Parents are naturally conservative and prefer any educational experiments to be carried out on someone else's kids.
But what is education for but to teach children the exact skills they will need to employ in tomorrow's workplace? Teaching them yesterday's skills would be ridiculous.
Treadwell says we already need to be lifelong learners. The facts on which jobs are based are no longer static but always changing.
In the old days, it was conformity that was valued. Learn a trade or profession and then apply that knowledge mechanically. Only about one in 20 would have a job that was in any sense creative. But now economies are being held back by a lack of creative self-starters.
"Creative cities like Dublin are saying their growth is stalling because they're running short of clever people."
Treadwell says the new curriculum plugs important gaps. There is a new emphasis on statistics as that is crucial to evaluating the quality of information. Second languages are being pushed, vital for working in a global economy. And perhaps surprisingly, oral skills have been identified as a new priority.
Treadwell says teachers everywhere are finding children are becoming more inarticulate. And yet 80% of jobs are in the service sector where being a good speaker, a polished presenter, is arguably the No. 1 requirement.
An obvious criticism of the new curriculum is that it may suit some but not others. Some may blossom with the freedom of inquiry learning. Others might find it too airy-fairy and prefer the comfort of strong structure.
Treadwell says this is a misunderstanding. In fact, the move away from a prescriptive "one size fits all" curriculum to a more flexible approach means schools are being encouraged to find the strategies that best suit each pupil.
"It will allow for a more vocational style training if that's what the child requires."
The new curriculum's focus on values might seem another "warm fuzzy". But Treadwell says the need is obvious. If we want children to be good citizens these days, we actively need to teach it.
Sadly, he says, many children are not learning the lessons at home. But also a more complicated world means children have to have the skill of navigating their own path through life. Moral debates which were once for the few are now a requirement for the many.
And Treadwell says the greatest misunderstanding is probably that all the old subjects will be junked from next year as children just study competencies.
In fact, what children learn will remain largely the same. It is how they learn it -- a nationwide shift to inquiry learning -- which is changing.
Principals who have been looking at the new curriculum, such as David O'Neil, of St Mary's Primary, in central Christchurch and Chris Reece, of Linwood Avenue Primary, agree.
Reece says in many ways, the new curriculum is simply endorsing changes already made at many schools. The old curriculum did nail down what needs to be taught and that will be carried forward. So all that will alter next year is teachers will be given more freedom to apply effective teaching methods.
One concern is there might be a knee-jerk reaction from parents to the new curriculum. Feelings that the NCEA was a dumbing down of standards quickly led to pressure for international qualifications such as the Cambridge exams and International Baccalaureate.
Treadwell says it is widely agreed the introduction of NCEA was bungled. It was not the shining success that the new curriculum seems to be.
But tinkering is seeing the exams come right. And half the problem was that they were simply ahead of their time. Treadwell says NCEA stems from the same educational philosophy, valuing understanding over rote learning, and so should sit much more happily with the new curriculum.
It all sounds like good news. Much too good really. That old Kiwi inferiority complex rises to the surface again. We are taking a bold step. Are we sure we are doing the right thing?
Treadwell, and others like Shanker, have no doubt. This is no whacky liberal exercise, says Shanker. It is the kind of training required for tomorrow's jobs.
Treadwell says other larger nations, like the United Kingdom and United States, have fallen for the political call to go back to basics. An obsession with testing has led to an environment where children are just taught how to pass tests.
"In America, for example, the `no child left behind' policy brought in by Bush has just reduced every school to a testing machine.
"The educational system there is going backwards at an incredible rate. Whole states in the US now don't teach things like drama or art," he says.
These countries responded to the dawn of the internet age and the apparent erosion of standards by going down the wrong path. Treadwell says that is the theme at every international educational conference he now attends.
New Zealand is lucky because we are small enough to react quickly. We can be the first to embrace the new direction. But the rest of the world is scrambling to follow.
Treadwell was actually on his cellphone from Australia, there to tell them about what we are doing. Treadwell reckons Australia is about 10 years behind in its policies. He says Tasmania did try to make a new curriculum-style change but stuffed it up by being overly ambitious. However, the new Rudd Government will soon be throwing serious dollars at the issue.
And if on this side of the Tasman there is an Achilles' heel, this looks like it. Resourcing.
Robin Duff, president of the Post Primary Teachers' Association, says the theory of the new curriculum is right, the practice is do-able. But will our government really spend what is required?
Duff says promises have been made about giving teachers time to prepare, and to provide other support, but he has learnt to be cynical about such commitments.
"Our experience with recent initiatives like NCEA has been that they say here it is, we've spent a lot of money creating it, now you go put it into operation."
Duff says another nagging issue is that, so far, the new curriculum covers the early years, yet is missing the detail of what happens over the NCEA years. It would be helpful to have that sooner rather than later.
But as to the new curriculum itself, Duff agrees it does indeed seem that rare thing, a case of a well-considered, well-timed policy change.
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Gordon, we do all know what 'college' means in the American context. We've seen Animal House.
(That's a joke.)
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Very interesting post, Gordon.
Shanker says he is bowled over with what we are attempting here. New Zealand is already top five in the world for its quality of education -- something he is puzzled to find we do not seem too aware of.
Quite.
One of the features of the post-Bill English National Party is the way they constructed memes around "Labour has made us the worst in the world". High taxes, low educational attainment, red tape holding business back - all of these memes are the opposite of objective reality, but they persisted in the memes, supported by a lazy and compliant MSM.
I've thought of a solution to the League Tables problem:
If the problem is incompetent teachers, the solution surely rests with the BOT and the Principal. MOE knowing the name of an underperforming teacher is not going to help at all.
So, we could simply submit all the data anonymously, using teacher and class codes known only to the school. The cohort of school data would be similarly coded, and include regional and demographic data, so we could analyse by regional, demographics etc.
Ministry could data mine and compile lists, and schools could be informed of where they stack up and which teachers need assistance, but unless you have access to all the school codes, you would not be able to create a league table, and certainly not drill down to individual classes or teachers.
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Just to link to the wider political stage we have:
Power Companies restructured due to the marketing success of Meridian, which our mixed grid made a lie of.
Teachers are under attack via an ambiguous policy that Hattie (the designer) is disavowing responsibility for and states it won't work. Snook corrected Tolleys ERO interpretation, Stoop remaind silent.
Now Doc & the HPT are being reviewd.
[edit: just as mineral exploration is being expanded into of National Parks] -
But as to the new curriculum itself, Duff agrees it does indeed seem that rare thing, a case of a well-considered, well-timed policy change.
More to the point, it was carefully developed, with an emphasis on consultation with all parties, most notably parents.
I was furious when Joanne Black wrote a sneering column about the new curriculum process, especially when I realised that she apparently hadn't ventured past the first page of the dedicated information website she was slagging.
Anyone who bothered to actually read the information (sound familiar?) would have seen a laudable and open process that actively reached out to parents.
Ironically, I suspect Ms Black is the author of the current Listener editorial, which essentially instructs anyone with qualms about the standards process to shut up and stop whining.
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Ms Black
For some time now I have had an uncharitable urge to... poke her in the arm. Really hard.
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Apologies if this has been covered already, don't have time to read all the comments above.
If the compilation of League Tables is genuinely not desirable, why doesn't the government keep the standards testing more or less confidential? ie: why should I know the results of anyone else but my own children?
I'm assuming the point of the standards is so the government has information required to improve educational standards. So, why do the public in general need to know all the results?
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For some time now I have had an uncharitable urge to tie her down to a chair and make her watch this.
Seriously though, the whole national standards affair is looking more and more like a veiled smokescreen for Pinkertonising the teachers.
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