A starter for ten…
So, here’s an easy starter for ten: just how possible is that renowned educators, and their researched evidence could be so wrong while the politicians and their media spin are so right?
This week, along with a hundred or so other Southland educators, I had the privilege of attending a two-day workshop run by noted assessment guru Lester Flockton. Not surprisingly, the issue of National Standards arose. In his careful and measured manner, Lester offered the following observation based on his reading of the OECD’s first ever report (2009) on the welfare of children: “Doing Better for Children”
“Despite their relatively poor material living conditions, Kiwi kids manage high levels of educational achievement – the 4th best in the OECD”
For more go to www.lesterflockton.co.nz – click on the “Topical Articles” menu then scroll (or read) down to National Standards: The Inconvenient Truth in . You will be able to read Lester’s full powerpoint presentation – one he is giving again at a public meeting in Dunedin’s Regent Theatre on the evening of 31 March. (NB: the bold font below is my own emphasis).
“Outcomes for New Zealand children are weak in several key areas, according to the OECD’s first ever report on children. Co‐author of the OECD report Mr Dominic Richardson concludes that “New Zealand needs to take a stronger policy focus on child poverty and child health, especially during the early years when it is easier to make a long‐term difference. Despite a relatively good average educational performance, gaps in education between top and bottom performers are higher than they need be.”
New Zealand government spending on children is considerably less than the OECD average. The biggest shortfall is for spending on young children, where New Zealand spends less than half the OECD average.”
“Despite their relatively poor material living conditions, Kiwi kids manage high rates of educational achievement – the fourth best in the OECD. However, unlike the other three high performing countries, differences between good and poor performers in the education system in New Zealand are average, not low.”
Note: the ‘gaps’ between NZ and the other OECD countries are in child poverty and child health - not in education, as the Minister would have you believe.
When I got home, I read Kelvin Smythe’s latest – in which he describes just how lacking in evidence are the so-called “facts” in the ERO report the Minister of Education quotes to justify National Standards. http://www.networkonnet.co.nz/index.php?section=latest&id=189
Smyth concludes “…we have on our hands a rogue organisation of state. My recommendation is that the teacher organisations, and political parties with a genuine concern fairness and truth in education, advocate, as part of their policy, an inquiry into the practices, culture, philosophy, and leadership of the education review office.”
Smythe’s article is supported by, and contains analysis from two eminent New Zealand professors of education: John O’Neill QPED vice-president and Massey University Professor of Education; and Ivan Snook - Emeritus Professor of Education at Massey University.
John O’Neill’s contribution includes :
- “Therefore the (ERO) report cannot be used as the basis of policy as the Minister does not have any factual basis for making comments about what occurs in schools as a whole, nor in year 1 and 2 classrooms as a whole
- It is therefore misleading for ERO or the Minister to make any claims about the perceived quality of practice of 30% of teachers in the report as if these were claims about the quality of practice of 30% of teachers nationally.
- Given the range and complexity of the judgments that reviewers were asked to make, the diversity of school and classroom contexts in which these would be made, and the number of reviewers involved, this omission is inexplicable. In the absence of such information, one cannot have any confidence that the reviewers judged the same phenomena.
- This means that it is impossible for ERO or the Minister to draw categorical distinctions between percentages of teachers or percentages of schools.
- When the Minister states that ‘these are the facts’, she may not be aware how few facts there are in the ERO report.”
Ivan Snook points to further serious faults in the 2009 ERO report and in the way it was reported in the Dominion.
“The Dominion Post headline said ‘Schools set Sights too Low.’ (15th December, 2009). Nothing in the ERO report supports this damning generalisation. Rather the report finds that the standard of goal setting, use of assessment data and methods of teaching are adequate or better.
- ‘These teachers [one in three teachers who, allegedly, ‘had little sense of how critical it was for year 1 and 2 pupils to develop confidence in reading and writing’] had minimal understanding of effective reading and writing teaching and set inappropriately low expectations.’ I could find no evidence of this in the report.
- It should also be remembered that the reviewers do not have robust methodologies for distinguishing ‘high, ‘good, ‘adequate’ or ‘inadequate’ teaching. The final results, expressed in what look like scientifically derived tables are nothing more than an aggregated set of the subjective judgments of individual reviewers.
- Having derived these tables, they summarise them in ways which support a particular point of view. For example, under ‘Qualities of Teaching of Reading’ we find: High: 26%, Good 43%, Adequate 21%, and Limited 10%. (p 8). In commenting on these the reviewers contrast the first two categories and the second two categories to ‘show’ that a third of the teachers are ‘failing’. But surely, if the teaching is ‘adequate’ it is ‘adequate’ (not excellent or outstanding but adequate) and a more honest reporting would place the unsatisfactory teachers at 10% rather than 31%.”
Back to that easy starter for ten - it’s a no-brainer isn’t it? Our kids deserve so, so much more than what they are being served by the politicians. This nonsense has got to stop.
