28 May 2009

Any excuse to scupper accountability of educators?

| johnboy
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The Greens’ Meredith Hunter is leaping upon doubts raised by a single education expert Professor Brian Caldwell over publishing of school performance data.

    “We expect the Education Minister to address concerns about the potential negative effects of the introduction of new testing and reporting systems that will make compiling league tables possible – a policy that the Minister has already signed the ACT up to.” Ms Hunter said today.

    “It’s important for Minister Barr to explain why he backs these radical changes to our education system, and how he will make sure that we won’t get league tables and an unfair attack on individual schools and teachers as a result.”

Because crap teachers wasting precious education opportunities available to young minds should always be protected?

UPDATED: Andrew Barr appears to have given up on the Chief Minister’s media office and has put out his own media release trying to reframe the issue:

    The debate about so-called league tables – from both sides, for and against – is a distraction.

    Nothing in these reforms will help those who want simplistic league tables which rank schools according to raw test scores. Additionally anyone who wants to can already do so based on results currently published in ACT school annual reports and available under ACT Freedom of Information laws.

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League tables using misleading data will be accurate eventually. They will create what they seek to describe when the public select or deselect based on them. How is it that we are going to measure intangibles like passion, compassion, happiness or sparking a lifelong learning journey? I don’t think the data will include longitudinal studies.

RE: accountability of educators, school inspectors (or what the yanks call “superintendents”) should be re-introduced.

My granddad used to be one. They were the level above school principals and used to visit schools on a rotational basis, reviewing curricula and sitting in on classes and generally keeping an eye on things.

They were particularly focused on what the principal was doing and IMO this is what is missing nowadays. There are some great principals out there, but when a school has real problems with morale and and discipline (among both teachers and students!), too often the rot starts at the top with a weak or disinterested principal. Without any external oversight, things can go on getting worse for a long time.

Unfortunately, the education unions got rid of school inspectors in the 1970s, using the pretext that teachers were professionals the same as doctors and lawyers and therefore didn’t require any oversight….

VYBerlinaV8_the_one_they_all_copy10:59 am 29 May 09

Performance metrics are a great idea. The debate shouldn’t be around whether or not they are fair, but rather how to use them in a genuinely effective manner. They should also contain some subjective components.

Clown Killer said :

The core if this debate is about whether or not publically funded organisations have a right to keep that information secret.

No, it’s not.

The core of the debate is the desire to find effective ways of improving the education system, rather than making a simplistic grab for league style tables that help no-one and end up further stigmatising and disadvantaging schools in lower socio-economic areas.

Clown Killer10:11 am 29 May 09

Let’s start by you telling us what you would look for in this statistical data, to show you which school is “the best”. for your child.

It’s actually irrelevant what conclusion anyone might come to. The core if this debate is about whether or not publically funded organisations have a right to keep that information secret.

sexynotsmart said :

I optimise performance of some of our country’s most complicated networks, but will somehow be confused by statistical data about nodes in my kid’s education system?

$20 says my analysis skills (nunchuku skills, bow hunting skills, computer hacking skills) are better than some baby-boomer blowhard with a combover.

Stop patronising us, academia. The information wants to be free.

I work in the IT industry with orders for millions of dollars on a regular basis, I want something quite simple for my children’s performance at school, and apparently, it is still run.

Parent / Teacher night has always been an effective way to understand the strengths and weaknesses of a particular child, allowing the parents to see what needs to be improved for their child’s opportunity to excel.

If the data that allows a parent to identify potential failings by the particular school or individual teachers was sent out in a format that people who don’t look after complicated networks or sell millions of dollars of IT products on a regular basis could understand, decisions that parents feel need to be made could be. And without changing schools, but, rather, discussing with the principal about the ability to shift their child to another class.

The principals need to be armed with the same data.

If a teacher is failing in the instruction and achievement levels, shouldn’t the first course of action be to find out why?

Wouldn’t it be better to re-assign a teacher to another area of the school system than to sack them and employ a new, younger teacher who has no prior experience and is in fact learning on the job, at the expense of the children’s education?

Of course there should be some type of standardised testing.

Of course there should be a performance based rewards system in place for teachers.

I have a degree in Education and taught for 14 yrs. I also have 4 children spread across the education system (public and private) so have a huge interest in this.

The very best 10 % of teachers are teaching because that’s what they were born to do. You all know at least one of them. The next 25% are no longer teaching. Jim Jones #7 is correct with his analysis of the lack of financial reward and the loss of respect for the profession. I had reached a career point where it was time to move schools as I was not going to be able to make the next step up at my current school. An opportunity to move into a different field presented itself and purely for financial reasons I moved out. Just to blow my own trumpet, I was co-ordinator level in a high school for student management, I taught classes of special students, the board of studies used to regularly contact the school and offer to re-mark HSC exams as my students on average performed above the estimates we provided. I get invited to ex-students wedding 10 yrs later. I was one of the good ones.

Now I get to place buttons on screens and make stuff happen when people press them. Important work no doubt and I go home each day satisfied with my work but doesn’t have the same impact on the future of our nation. I do however get paid double the money…

The people involved certainly should be required to show how they are managing the system effectively. That’s everyone from the top down. They should be required to show how they have supported the development of the child. They should also be given the support of society and the support of the families for whom they do this important work. The students involved should also be expected, by the school, by their parents and by society to take full advantage of what they are being offered.

Wellington Sludge7:55 am 29 May 09

sexynotsmart said :

I optimise performance of some of our country’s most complicated networks, but will somehow be confused by statistical data about nodes in my kid’s education system?

$20 says my analysis skills (nunchuku skills, bow hunting skills, computer hacking skills) are better than some baby-boomer blowhard with a combover.

Stop patronising us, academia. The information wants to be free.

Not that I’m that baby-boomer (or any baby-boomer for that matter), but I’m up for claiming that $20. Let’s start by you telling us what you would look for in this statistical data, to show you which school is “the best”. for your child.

sexynotsmart11:30 pm 28 May 09

I optimise performance of some of our country’s most complicated networks, but will somehow be confused by statistical data about nodes in my kid’s education system?

$20 says my analysis skills (nunchuku skills, bow hunting skills, computer hacking skills) are better than some baby-boomer blowhard with a combover.

Stop patronising us, academia. The information wants to be free.

grunge_hippy said :

why is it only nurses and teachers that are made to look bad when we demand pay equal to our skills and education?

If your profession truly demanded pay equal to your skills / education, the public would be appreciative for the savings in expenditure it would create. I suspect that while there is the occasional qualified teacher, the high rates of unionism and the willingness to place your own interests above those to which you have a duty of care justifies most peoples generalisations of the industry.

Bring on performance based pay, education vouchers and nationalised testing of both school and teacher performance.

grunge_hippy said :

why is it only nurses and teachers that are made to look bad when we demand pay equal to our skills and education?

Because they are seen as female-dominated occupations and therefore of less value.

grunge hippie, the ACT AEU is and always will be a TOOTHLESS TIGER. They are the reason the EBAs are shite. In 1999 the decision to shaft younger teachers with mobility was agreed to in exchange for older teachers getting more money. Last EBA evened the field with ALL staff having to move and, suprise surprise, the older teachers don’t like it and want the mobility options changed.

I’d settle for better resources.

MWF, they don’t assist when there are severe issues within a school. They ‘listen’ and then walk away until the next teacher complains….sometimes up to 20 staff and still nothing.

deezagood, it’s like that in China too – a nice refreshing change where parents and students respected their teachers and international ones too 🙂

grunge_hippy9:28 pm 28 May 09

i am not a poster girl for the AEU… I dont like strike action either. i often refuse to strike, as I dont feel it helps. however, they are attempting to find ways to weed out underperfoming teachers with their new EBA agreement (which is up this year). it will be the government that shoots it down, making us look bad yet again as money hungry teachers who dont care about the kids.

why is it only nurses and teachers that are made to look bad when we demand pay equal to our skills and education?

Good on you nyssa, although I really do think teachers are severely underpaid and unappreciated. I worked in Japan for a year and couldn’t believe how respected teachers are over there. At the end of the year, the parents put on a big celebration thank you banquet for the teaching staff (it was a lot like a wedding actually), the teachers were very well paid (and therefore the profession attracted a lot more primary breadwinners; ie.men), they were respectfully addressed by students/parents and were generally held in very high esteem. It depresses me to compare this to our country.

nyssa76 said :

deezagood, well I won’t be striking. Non-AEU member here. Oh and I don’t believe in strike action.

Nyssa

I am interested to know, if you can say, why you are a non AEU member? I know of someone who is considering resigning from the AEU for some very good reasons.

deezagood, well I won’t be striking. Non-AEU member here. Oh and I don’t believe in strike action.

On my soapbox now … from my observations, schools really, really hate providing hard data on even individual child performance, let alone data on groups of students within a school. The current A – E system was bought in to try and give parents as least some idea of how their child is going from a comparitive perspective – but boy schools really, really hate the A – E system, and many schools refuse to actually use the scheme as it was intended (to help parents work out where their child sits from a performance perspective). There are a large number of primary schools in the ACT who refuse, point blank, to use the ‘A’ and ‘E’ rankings; at our school for example, not a single child recieved an A or an E for any subject across the whole school. In these schools most of the kids (regardless of ability) come come with Cs against every subject. I know it is only primary school and grades don’t mean much, but I would really like to know if my child was struggling at an early stage. Not using the proper grading scale as it was intended isn’t helpful for parents (especially if you have a struggling child and if you knew they were struggling, you might be able to access intervention measures to help them to come up to speed). I raise this point only to demonstrate how much schools generally hate quantifiable data regarding performance … this national testing must be sending them over the edge! I am expecting strike action any day now ….

grunge hippie, you’d be the only teacher in the department who thinks the AEU has the ability to weed out the crap teachers.

Good teachers are the ones who would do anything for students to achieve success with their learning.

The bad ones don’t give a rats and can’t wait to leave as soon as the bell rings and are usually the first to be promoted as they alter their results.

As a parent, I’m a bit torn over this. On one hand, it would be nice to see where/how the school compares to other schools, because as I only have my kids at one school, how would I otherwise know this? I guess we currently just have faith that the school is educating our kids to the required levels for each year, but without comparison data, it really is just based on good faith. I also think the results can give the shool some clear goals in terms of areas requiring improvement.

That said, qualitative data can certainly be misused and I would hate to see parents pulling their kids out of a school due to a poor showing on tests, without giving the school a chance to improve or aknowledging the many other benefits that schools can provide to children, but that can’t be easily translated into data (such as a safe environment, a sense of community, a great sport/language program, confidence building opportunities, a terrific special needs program etc…).

Clown Killer7:52 pm 28 May 09

This rubbish from the teacher unions about good teachers getting branded as bad because of a broken reporting system is simply scare tactics from a crowd devoid of ideas when it comes to arguing the case against informing parents. It’s drumming up fear and undeserved support for a status quo designed to keep parents in the dark.

Their most audacious claim is that parents aren’t smart enough to understand how the data is presented and that they will jump to the wrong conclusions. Where do these people get off by insulting parents who want to make informed decisions?

If the teachers union was genuinely interested in making a difference it would be supporting a policy that helps to weed out the dead wood instead of one based around convincing the community that mediocrity is really worlds-best-practice.

Literacy and numeracy are such bourgeois concepts.

grunge_hippy6:59 pm 28 May 09

I am bloody good at my job, but if you looked at my students test results, you would think i was the worst teacher in the world… but I teach special needs classes with kids with learning difficulties… many who are not exempt from testing.

there are crap teachers, i have met many of them. i believe the union are trying to weed them out, and have suggested ways in which teachers who do more professional development and further tertiary studies are rewarded with higher pay, its the dept that needs to recognise this. The people in recruitment also are trying to weed them out by not offering permanency. the problem is the lack of casual and contract teachers means that a lot are working on long term contracts in schools, where they have no right to be. there is a drastic shortage of teachers, like another poster said, because they can get paid more in the public service and have less hassle.

we can all whinge about wanting more pay, but it will never change until teaching is valued as the profession that it is.

it,s almost laughable some of the kids who were considered elligible to complete the NAPLAN testing this term… some of the special school kids or those in LSUs arw the ones I’m thinking of. Ones who can’t even consistently follow a single step direction… Standardised testing for league tables rather thab for feedback to the staff or parents in question is misuse.

Wellington Sludge6:12 pm 28 May 09

johnboy said :

Some teachers will be better than others.

In my experience some are diabolically bad, but even if that wasn’t the case some would be better than others.

The current system shields those bad teachers, and the education union refuses to countenance any changes which would make poor teachers improve.

With any metric it’s a matter of choosing the right metric.

The ability to improve children’s results would be what the smart parents should be looking for rather than raw marks.

A teacher can improve children’s results by going into the spreadsheet and changing the numbers, or by writing an easy, non-challenging assessment task so all the students pass.

Sorry, Johnboy, but the really smart parents should be looking for a school that helps their children to learn and prepare them for a good life where they can optimise their skills and abilities. This is hard to measure in the short term, which is why these types of measures are inadequate.

Some teachers will be better than others.

In my experience some are diabolically bad, but even if that wasn’t the case some would be better than others.

The current system shields those bad teachers, and the education union refuses to countenance any changes which would make poor teachers improve.

With any metric it’s a matter of choosing the right metric.

The ability to improve children’s results would be what the smart parents should be looking for rather than raw marks.

Considering the difficulty to get a child into schools at the moment outside of their feeder, the last thing that needs to be broadcast is a who’s who of the good, the bad and the ugly.

The numbers of kids who go through public or private schools and don’t sit the AST is not fully due to the teacher’s or the school’s recommendations, but also to the other kids themselves, who track down the underachievers in some cases, and “suggest” that they might like to skip doing the test.

I know, whilst at Copland college in yr12, it was suggested that if I did sit the test, I could expect serious consequences. I did sit the AST, and aced it. I still got the stuffing knocked out of me after school, by the people who had warned me.

This behaviour would only be exacerbated by publishing a league table, particularly if it was focusing on particular teachers. the kids in that teacher’s class would be identified by their peers quickly.

I’m not entirely opposed to publishing school performance data, but it has to be done in a way that addressed the concerns raised by the luminaries above me (Jim Jones, Granny, and Inappropriate). I think you canhave the best of both worlds in this arena… I just don’t think it’s likely that the bureaucrats will find a way to do it.

+1 to both Granny and Inappropriate.

The only outcome I can see from a ‘league table’ of schools would be choas and confusion.

The information that parents need in deciding which school to send their children is best gathered by: checking the school out themselves and talking to people about their experiences with the school.

What *any* of this has to do with “crap teachers wasting precious education opportunities” is beyond me.

How is this system supposed to uncover this evil cabal of ‘crap teachers’, prey tell? Just another ignorant drive to blame teachers for the perceived ills of the education system.

If you want to look at the reasons behind the faltering of the education system, have a look at the sh1t pay and lack of respect they get. This has led to a situation where intelligent, committed, passionate people have turned away from teaching careers because they can earn better pay (and better conditions) as low-level office workers. At the same time, a lot of people doing educational degrees at uni at the moment are doing so because the TER ranking is so low, it’s the only thing they could get into. Hell, only a few years ago, they had to change the textbooks at UC for Bachelor of Education because the students couldn’t understand the damn things.

Wellington Sludge said :

Any teacher who elects to take a lower ability class, for example, would rather their performance be assessed by the improvements they have made to their pupils’ learning abilities and knowledge, not what they get in their assessment tasks.

This is my main concern. What if a teacher comes in and works their guys out, raising literacy and numeracy substantially in those students? Meanwhile the website helpfully informs parents: this teacher sucks … big time!

It also becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, as the worse the school is perceived to be the harder it is to attract good teaching staff and the more the morale of the school suffers.

I’m all for giving parents accurate and useful information about the progress of their child and I’m huge on accountability, but I don’t feel this system achieves either of these goals.

Also, not all success can be measured academically. The parent satisfaction survey results do help to ameliorate this effect somewhat, but I still believe that a prospective parent looking at that information will not get a real picture of the school.

It’s kind of an eBay approach to shopping for schools that is pretty two-dimensional, in my opinion.

Inappropriate4:08 pm 28 May 09

Clown Killer said :

Let me get this straight. This Brian Caldwell believes that parents shouldn’t be allowed to access the information that they need to make decisions about the performance of a school that they may be considering sending their children too.

No. He believes the information will be misleading and result in parents making ill informed decisions.

Clown Killer3:58 pm 28 May 09

I’m only going to address my comments to the drivel sprouted by Brian Caldwell as commenting on Merideth Hunter’s parroting of Caldwells views would have the possibility of lending undue gravitas to the views of an MLA who’s primary contribution to the community remains greenhouse gas emmissions.

Let me get this straight. This Brian Caldwell believes that parents shouldn’t be allowed to access the information that they need to make decisions about the performance of a school that they may be considering sending their children too.

So, if what parents are going to receive is information about the school’s performance, it’s not really telling them very much about how their child is performing within a particular classroom, with a particular teacher.

If, in the absence of information on the schools performance their child has ended up in a dud school it’s probably too late when you get to the nitty gritty of how their child is performing within a particular classroom, with a particular teacher … and even if it wasn’t this whole premise is little more than a meaningless diversion on the part of Caldwell – surely a parent would have a pretty good idea of how their child is progressing from the time that they have spent with their child doing homework, reading and other activities, from the daily or weekly interactions with the childs teacher at school, sporting and school based social events.

This is almost certain that it will stigmatise many schools … and will quickly lead to a view that certain schools are not performing well, when in fact, under the circumstances, they’re doing exceedingly well …

So parents should continue to be in the dark about these schools and unwittingly continue to send their children to these schools so that the incompetent teachers, administrators and Education Department officials responsible can continue to disadvantage children and rip-off tax-payers.

And then this little gem from the teachers union:

… a teacher boycott of national tests is being considered unless the Federal Government backs down on its plan for the publication of school profiles.

I guess when you have no genuine arguments against a policy supported in the community holding your breath and stamping your feet becomes an appealing option.

JB, this is much, much more than just one educator and the Greens. It is very controversial, and for every argument for, there is an equally compelling one against.

A good case where the precautionary principle should be applied. Perhaps a limited trial first, and decisions then being based on the evidence, not what seem to be pretty widely and wildly expressed opinions on either side.

Wellington Sludge3:27 pm 28 May 09

No, because the general public doesn’t understand how these methods don’t really measure school performance. Instead, the systems elaborate on how schools can manipulate their classes and achievements to get the required results (e.g. just try asking some of the more expensive private colleges in the ACT why they encourage their lower ability students to not sit the AST, just so their overall results are higher when they’re printed in the CT in December. Although you won’t get that answer from them!).

The measurements need to accurately reflect the accomplishments of a teacher. Any teacher who elects to take a lower ability class, for example, would rather their performance be assessed by the improvements they have made to their pupils’ learning abilities and knowledge, not what they get in their assessment tasks. And how do you actually measure that? That’s why teachers and others would like to know more about the new systems.

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