Tolley gets Tomahawked.

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Toad -
this may amuse you:
http://gordoncampbell.scoop.co.nz/2010/02/03/union-bashing-and-the-dis pute-over-national-standards/

Includes:

Lets get this straight. Teaching, like nursing is the kind of profession in which people are largely motivated by concerns about the welfare of those in their care. It may play well amongst the rednecks out there to turn this conflict into a union-bashing exercise, but the people on the front lines are not rednecks – they are parents, teachers and boards motivated by a concern for children, and they will still be there when and if the education standards are finally rammed down their throats. Meaning : even if Key “wins’ a political fight framed as a union bashing exercise, he will have succeeded only in poisoning the teaching environment, longer term. The compromise that would prevent this negative and entirely avoidable outcome is right under his nose : trial and pilot the standards. If it is good enough to allow Maori parents and teachers to trial and pilot these standards in kura kaupapa schools, why isn’t it good enough to let the same thing happen in mainstream state schools ?

Remember, Gordon used the “r” word, not me.

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spc says “As I said I would only add end of school tests on the intake when they leave primary or intermediate school each year – to evaluate “school” performance by national standards in support of what the ERO does. If school performance was poor then assessing why. This provides sufficient information.”

Unless of course your child spends years in a poorly performing school, and this is only found out when they leave. Not good enough.

I find it appalling that there is a campaign to keep information about poorly performing schools from parents.

As some independent experts have said – the assessments could be almost identical to those used by a large number of schools now.

Teaching to the test is a red herring. For a start, competent teachers will not need to or want to do that. It’s pretty insulting to teachers to say they will all teach to the test.

Secondly, if the test is a general assessment of overall ability in literacy and numeracy, and teachers teach that, then it will obviously be successful.

Reporting childrens progress more acuarately and more often to parents has been proven to improve the childs learning performance.

Logical really – the vast majority of parents want to help their children and if there are areas where they are struggling, parents will help more at home.

Effectively better reporting leading to greater parental involvement, is going to make teacher performance look better as well.

But this important thing is improves the children learning, particularly in areas they are lagging behind in.

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photonz

Schools are overseen by the ERO. As I said I would only add end of school tests on the intake when they leave primary or intermediate school each year – to evaluate “school” performance by national standards in support of what the ERO does. If school performance was poor then assessing why. This provides sufficient information.

And for intermediates this is after only a two year turnaround from their intake measurement – those leaving primary school.

If more was desirable one could move onto include primary school start and end of year 3 and end of primary school.

The problem with going too far – national standards each year is that the advantages from regular testing of individual students to improve teacher performance apparently do not outweigh the disadvantages of teaching to the national standard assessment.

Which is why National, in ignoring the research, is not helping our childrens education – but is in fact using a Trojan horse to their cause of bulk funding and competition amongst teachers for performance pay (undermining collective bargaining).

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Comparing the UK system which is a completely different prescriptive system to what is proposed here, is nothing less than an attempt to mislead.

As independent authorities have said – for a large number of schools the assessment wil be virtually identical to what they do now.

If teachers stop teaching properly and only teach to pass the test, then they can’t be very good at their job. I have confidence that teachers will perform at a much, much higher level than what you are expecting.

Do you believe that parents have a right to know if they are sending their child to a school that is totally useless, or really good?

Do you beleive schools that have problems should be identified quickly, and help give though extra funding, extra specialised teachers, or extra training?

Do you beleive schools should be given help based on their measured needs, rather than some schools getting much more help than others despite not needing as much, as happens now?

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photonz1 – criticism from you and others supporters of National’s proposal do not concern me personally. I expect that teachers will be vilified over the coming weeks. John Key has already begun with his ’30%’ nonsense.
If you were to pause for a moment to consider this aspect of the issue, you might wonder why this is the case. A Government attacking its teaching professionals. You can see it in your own behaviour. Very constructive, positive governing, that, Ms Tolley, Mr Key.

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The Herald has a plethora of comments on the issue, photonz1, some from parents and teachers who have been through the UK experience.
Here’s one to sample, but I encourage you to visit the site and browse.
There is much for you to learn there, should you choose.

Jez (New Zealand)
11:20AM Tuesday, 27 Oct 2009
As a recently expatriated Pom, and former chair of governors of a primary school in the UK, I find it deeply worrying that my kids are to be subjected to the same “you must pass this test” training we had to endure in the UK. Sure, it’s important to know how kids are doing, and teacher assessment needs some sort of moderation to confirm the teacher’s judgements, but publishing league tables is absolutely not the way to go about it.

All that will happen (and has happened in the UK) is that the school will be pressured to teach to the test. All that happens in year 6 in the UK from January through to May when the SAT tests are taken is *training* for the tests.

No educational value what so ever.

League tables that deal in absolutes have no merit at all and never will reflect the value added by the school. You might have a school that’s bottom of the table, but has brought its pupils on much more than the school at the top – it all depends what level they start at and that can be heavily influenced by the child’s home environment.
League tables that deal in absolutes have no merit at all and never will reflect the value added by the school. You might have a school that’s bottom of the table, but has brought its pupils on much more than the school at the top – it all depends what level they start at and that can be heavily influenced by the child’s home environment.

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greenfly – anybody who thinks about it for more than a second will realise than not all schools at the same decile need the same help. Some will be doing much better than others, or have different requirements for help.

So your solution is to throw the same amount of money at them whether they need it or not – brilliant.

Is this the sort of logic you teach your pupils?

I’m begining to realise why there is a problem.

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‘fly -
sorry, went out, missed being on your wing.

Photonz, BB, etc:
Here is the Ministry of Ed site for the ERO, to give you an idea what they actually do already.
http://www.ero.govt.nz/ero/publishing.nsf/Content/Home+Page
Read several of the pages. Please.

Toad -
this may amuse you:
http://gordoncampbell.scoop.co.nz/2010/02/03/union-bashing-and-the-dispute-over-national-standards/

Generally, to all comers:
The National Standards are being discussed here as though the automatic assumption is that they will increase the average outcome. Not necessarily so; after all, School Cert was a national ranking standard, and it’s defined purpose was merely to rank all available 5th formers, then fail half of them. It is hardly likely to improve access to extension programmes for gifted children, who will still be coasting along while the rest of the class are keeping up with the standard curriculum. It’s up to motivated parents to find extension programmes outside school, if they want to foster gifted children.

Your much-valued National Standard may only show that most children already achieve this, that certain categories of children can’t achieve it, and that throwing a lot of extra assistance at some children may achieve an incremental improvement in their specific learning disability.
The only reason that we know that state school education fails some children is because we are now mainstreaming, and evaluating, children who once would have been in a special care facility for learning disabled children.

Samiam:
Having an ADD child is a very difficult parenting experience, and without trying to destroy any hope you have for that child, you may need to come to terms with the fact that this disability has long-range effects on a child’s learning capacity, and that outcomes for this child should not be compared to the potential that your two younger children have.
She must be a lovely child, to have a temperament that failed to alert her teachers to her learning difficulty; ADD shows up more frequently in boys, and has behavioural aspects in boys that alert most adults in contact with them to the likliehood of learning difficulties.
Try to focus on her positive attributes, and look for areas of strength that she can develop – kinaesthetic learning styles often work better than visual (text-based) for these learners – Special Education Services in Welington can supply more information about that than I can offer here. (and I’m a bit rusty, but I know they still have a unit dedicated to specific learning disabilities which deals with ADD learners.)

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SPC – you are correct – performance based pay and bulk funding – Bill English’s pet project for yonks!

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“In exactly the same way that decile ratings identify schools that need more help, so will National Standards.”.

Brilliant!

Let’s use the decile ratings then and save a great deal of unnecessary waste of time and effort.

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SPC – It sounds like National Standards address many of your issues.

1/ Over two thirds of schools currently assess against various standards which are not standard. They would all use the same one. This would reduce work rather than increase workload for these schools.

2/ There may be many reasons why classes/schools/individual pupils perform poorly compared to the national average. National Standards will quickly identify these classes so the problem can be rectified. It may be disruptive pupils, poor teacher performance, school environment and facilities, health issues etc.

As such, with National Standards there will be an additional $36m to help struggling students, and an extra $26m for teacher training, and $75m extra for specialist teachers.

3/ In exactly the same way that decile ratings identify schools that need more help, so will National Standards.

4/ We already have parents taking their kids away from poorly performing schools. Our nearest school is 75% empty – six empty classes out of eight. If National Standards can direct more help to poorly performing schools, this will improve this situation – not make it worse.

All National Standards are is a measuring tool. To improve performance, first you have to measure so you can see what needs improving, and what changes/resources work and which ones don’t.

That way you can acurately aim money and resources, in correctly measured amounts, relative to need.

Currently it’s all rather random. Some schools are getting much more help than others who need it more desperately.

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We compare favourably (internationally) at Standard 3 level in the primary school where there are no national standards in place – this despite us starting behind many others in numbers in pre-school education. So what exactly is the problem, current performance is very good.

Research has not shown national standards to improve the education outcomes (which is why we do poorly at secondary school – students constantly ranked below others lose motivation and essentially give up).

So why this option, where there is no problem and even if there were this would be not the answer shown by research into educational performance?

All national standards do is

1. Create more bureaucratic workload for teachers – reducing time preparing lessons.

2. Rank pupils to others, rank achievement between schools.

They have nothing to do with pupils and their education and everything to with the elephant in the room. This change is required to bring in pay for teachers based on performance (and related bulk funding – creating teacher competition for available money and reducing mutual teacher support and co-operation) – which is why the advocacy for standards is the idea that where children perform below others of their age, this is some sign of poor teacher performance.

In actuality, performance has been and will remain a function of deciles. And if anything such national standards will reduce teacher motivation to go into certain schools and try and make a difference. It will therefore result in some schools losing pupils and closing and consequently creating a need to bus children out of their neighbourhoods to get them to school.

IMO, the most important change required (in primary schools) is teachers trained to teach children with dyslexia and there to be classes for these children, so they learn to read and write despite their problem as soon as possible and then return to the mainstream. The money promoting “National” party political propaganda could be better spent.

“National” standards have a place, to assess the performance of a school across years of their student’s enrolment – intake and final output. The same sort of outcomes tested by NCEA for individuals used for primary and intermediate schools. Anything more is more a control device placed on union workers by there would be political bosses and for ideological reasons not educational ones.

PS Failure of the students ranked as low achieving can only be reversed by getting them out of their “failure habit” environment and into a new one – (reading recovery at the lower school) and earlier academy “diversion” at secondary level (possibly for all those who reach this level too far behind others to be mainstreamed). Many would do better in more group orientated learning, with mentors and the like.

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greenfly – is that the best you’ve got? That a quite different system to what is proposed here had mixed results in the UK (reviews said it did improve teaching standards for literacy).

That’s as weak as saying the UK free health system is in a mess so we shouldn’t have a “free health system” here.

I’ll ask again, why would children be so much worse off with a national standard instead of the current (mixed) standards?

(considering independent education organisations have said many schools would barely notice any difference from their current assessment system)

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Yay National!

http://norightturn.blogspot.com/2010/02/kicking-deaf.html

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Wooden piles. Yep.

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foto – if my arguments about ‘schoools’ are ‘rediculous’ and nonsense, then I must retire to re-educate myself.
Okay foto – one argument why ‘national standards are bad for children’
the failure of the process in the UK.
How’s that?
You aren’t addressing that claim, despite my asking you several times. Perhaps you’ll do that now.

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greenfly – the claim some but not all schoools already used standardss did not come from me – it came from those opposing the standards.

Like the claims that it will take lots more work, contradicting claims that most schools assess against standards now (you just made that one yourself).

If as you say they are already doing this, then it rediculous that they all use different assessments instead of the same one.

Your arguements are nonsense. You claim that nationals assessment plan is idiotic while saying schools are already being highly assessed.

The fact that you’ve made a large number of posts about this, many full of purile childish personal abuse, but not a single intelligent argument why national standards are bad for children – not one.

If you are trying to convince people that national standards are bad, ythen ou might consider actually coming up with a reason why children would be worse off.

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@big bro 4:21 PM

Tolley is handling it well, this is obvious by the way the left has gone after her in the best Saul Alinsky style.

That’s not what Fran O’Sullivan or Colin Espiner, both of whom tend to be sympathetic to National, say:

O’Sullivan (frog’s quote above): Tolley is such a weak link that it would make sense to dump her from the front row.

Espiner:

What I don’t understand is why Key is dying in a ditch on this. The hallmark of his premiership to date has been his ability to wheeler-deal and negotiate; to extract compromises from seemingly impossible positions. It’s served him extremely well and won him grudging admiration even from his political enemies.

I understand the NZEI offered the Government its cooperation in a substantial trial of national standards this year, but this was rejected.

It’s almost as if Key is tired of playing Mr Nice Guy and wants to show the steel behind the “relaxed” Prime Minister.

That’s his call, but I think he’s picked the wrong issue and the wrong target. The NZEI is a formidable foe.

In backing an incompetent Minister who attempts to dictate rather than negotiate, Key is in danger of dragging himself down with Tolley.

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Photonz1 – your claim that some schools are ‘using no standards’ is again an indication that you haven’t a clue.

Schools are highly assessed and use assessment techniques extensively.
They already exist, these much-sought-after assessments. The pretence that ‘something needs to be put in place’, is a nonsense that you are buying into.
Have you an answer to the failure of the UK system? That should alert you to aspects of Nationals idiotic plan that you’ve not addressed. I await your opinion on that matter with keen interest.

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