“It’s going well.” Is it really?
“Education Minister Anne Tolley said no other country had National Standards like New Zealand’s. “This is a world-leading initiative and many countries are watching with interest,” she said yesterday.”
So the Minister was quoted in responding to Thursday’s article (Southland Times 27/05/10) regarding our opposition to national standards.
The first point may well be valid. However, as is the case with the supposed effectiveness of the standards themselves; it maybe that there is no hard evidence to support that contention.
The second point may be accurate too. Human nature being what it is; morbid fascination is what keeps people watching a train wreck.
Mrs Tolley is also reported as saying that “the standards had been developed by experts, and allowed teachers to assess students and make a professional judgement about progress using a variety of tools.”
Aside from the fact that teachers have long been assessing students and making professional judgements about progress using a variety of tools; the implication that the standards have gone through a development process is somewhat misleading.
The national standards have undergone none of the extensive researched and collaboratively development that has made the New Zealand Curriculum a real “world-leading initiative (that) many countries are watching with interest.”
National standards have been determined by ‘backward mapping’ from NCEA Level 2 (equivalent to the old University Entrance); underpinning the admittedly admirable aspirational goal of having every student attain it.
Two realities: try ‘backward mapping’ your tax return from the size of the refund you want, and; qualifying times for the Commonwealth Games team are also ‘aspirational goals’. Is it realistic to expect every athlete in the country to meet them? If not – is it any more reasonable to expect every six-year-old in the country to reach national’s (arbitrarily determined qualifying) standards?
Many principals are opposed to the idea of labelling students as failures – there are very few other euphemisms for “well-below standard” – but very few would opposed to the concepts of standards of achievement, or plain-language reporting. Despite the ‘spin’ to the contrary, New Zealand’s ongoing development of; and monitoring and reported against; expected levels of achievement relative to students’ age and stage have long been part of New Zealand’s educational fabric. To claim otherwise is simply disingenuous.
The first two bullet points in Section 1 of The New Zealand Teachers Code of Ethics read:
“Teachers will strive to:
a) develop and maintain professional relationships with learners based upon the best interests of those learners,
b) base their professional practice on continuous professional learning, the best knowledge available about curriculum content and pedagogy, together with their knowledge about those they teach,”
The implementation of national standards demands that teachers and principals overlook the meaning and intention of both statements because:
a) the “best knowledge available” verifies that wherever they have been tried, national standards regimes have failed students and their communities; b) “the best interests of…learners” are not served by committing every single one of them to an untried and untested regime.
Sheer logic alone dictates that if “no other country (has) National Standards like New Zealand’s”; then New Zealand has absolutely no way of knowing that New Zealand’s approach will work. Would the populace be as willing to commit all primary school-aged students to a national health initiative when there was no research to support it? The subsequent ramifications would be just as life-long.
Opposition to the National Standards is supported by the research data; the support for them is not.
