When repeatedly asked if the Ministry had data sufficiently good to tell us how students at various levels of the system were achieving, Ms Tinetti responded that the Ministry has good data on how students are progressing.
While data on progress is of critical importance when assessing an individual student's learning journey, it is near to useless in assessing the performance of cohorts of students, and therefore in measuring the effectiveness of learning interventions overall. The truth is that the Ministry of Education is flying blind, and it has been flying blind for a long time. It has very poor data on how students, in aggregate, are achieving, and little idea of how to target resources to address deficiencies.
The reasons we do not have this data are ideological, and pedagogical, and not pragmatic.
The education sector has long opposed the collection of comparative data, and has obstructed any efforts toward this end. This opposition is driven by a widespread view in education that comparative data ...
1. Unfairly damages underachieving students which ensures their on-going failure.
2. Unfairly stigmatizes schools with low achievement levels, when poor achievement may have little to do with the quality of instruction in these schools.
3. Emphasises content (knowledge) over the learning process (skills). With the latter considered to be of significantly greater importance.
4. Undermines a school's ability to develop a curriculum uniquely relevant to their school community.
5. Inevitably results in assessments that are culturally biased and which do not reflect the many ways students learn and grow.
6. Advances the argument that if student achievement can be accurately measured, so too can the performance of teachers.
While these arguments highlight some valid potential downsides to the collection of achievement data, these downsides need to be weighed against the potential upsides.
The truth is that opposition to the collection of standardized achievement data has come from academics who have argued that this sort of data collection produces inequitable outcomes, and from teacher unions, petrified that such data could be used to bolster the case for performance-based pay. While there may be some validity to these concerns, this does not mean these concerns could not be mitigated where there was a will to do so.
While more equitable outcomes may be desirable, there is no evidence to suggest that hiding poor educational achievement, by not measuring it, does any favours to anyone, not least underachieving students. Accurate, cohort-based, standardized, data is critical if educational outcomes are to be improved. This would provide a very clear picture of where the system is working, and where it is not working, which ideas and schools require emulation, and which require remediation, and support.
Standardized testing also provides a clearer picture of what should be expected at each level of the system. This enables teachers to anticipate skill levels on entry to their class, what will be required at the exit from their class, and what necessary knowledge needs to be embedded at each respective level.
Further, the collection of standardized, norm-referenced, data would provide assurances to parents that feedback on their child's performance was accurate, it would provide an indication of how their child was achieving against other children their age, and it would provide clarity on areas of comparative strength and weakness. Parents would no longer be dependent on vague assurances of their child's progress, as these assurances would be undergirded by sound data, perhaps, ironically, providing a much more precise indication of their progress year to year.
Such data would also enable accurate target setting at the
local and national level, and it would promote more effective targeting of
resources.
While the National Standards implemented by the previous National Government ultimately failed, this does not mean the idea was a bad one. These standards failed because they were poorly designed, and because the education sector refused to implement these in good faith. There was also an unnecessary, unhelpful, and even provocative insistence that this data be made available in national league tables.
It has been argued by opponents of National Standards that these exacerbate inequities and impoverish learning. This is nonsense. National testing of students existed in New Zealand right up until the nineteen nineties at which time our educational standards were world-leading. It might be argued that it is the demise of these tests that has contributed to our decline.
Many of the arguments proffered against the national testing of students are valid. But there is absolutely no reason why these arguments could not be addressed at the level of test design, and by ensuring that more general formative data, and impressions, continue to comprise a part of the assessment mix. For decades New Zealand students sat Progress and Achievement Tests in Listening, Reading, Writing, and Mathematics. I know of no teacher who ever saw these as the full picture, who did not bring in other data and impressions when reporting on a student's attainment, or who saw these as an invitation to compromise the quality and delivery of their programmes.
The unwillingness of sector groups to find a middle ground on this is proof positive that self-interest and ideology lie at the heart of their opposition to any form of national testing.
I am skeptical that the ideologues who populate the Ministry of Education, and education at large, will take this necessary step to halt our decline. So brace yourself for worse to come, and the inevitable refrain that national testing is a Western construct, and therefore racist.
Every decision we make in life is a trade-off. Those who inhabit the ivory towers of academia, and the various agencies of state, may deny this reality, but the rest of us do not have this luxury, and nor does the next generation. We know the world does not work that way!
Caleb Anderson, a graduate history, economics, psychotherapy and theology, has been an educator for over thirty years, twenty as a school principal.
8 comments:
I wonder if anyone has mentioned this to our Education Minister? Surely such an esteemed and knowledgeable person and honest too, would be keen to take some action to improve the situation. Sarc.
MC
Well said, Mr Anderson.
It is time we drained the swamp of these idiotic ideologues, for they have now been weighed; they have been measured; and they absolutely have been found wanting.
None of us, least of all our young who entrust us with their education and are our future, should put up with this crap for a moment longer.
Let's be done with them.
PATs were never done in writing. Perhaps you mean vocabulary?
There are many schools who still carry out this testing and use the data to inform teaching decisions. You are correct about the reluctance to use it at a national level.
Unfortunately most parents believe that NZ schools are trying to do something, they are not trying to do at all. The MoE in fact have signed themselves over to a cult-like ideology. This is the Church of Indoctrination with the aim of turning out a socialized child not an educated one. Their priorities are collectivist indoctrination with a deliberate downplaying and devaluing of everything that was traditionally done in schools that worked and science has now shown to be true.
Instilling knowledge directly is anathema whereas skills taught in a vacuum is the MoE aim. The resultant train wreck has produced thousands of illiterates and innumerates who also struggle with written work and science. Earlier last century 12 year old students were probably more competent in the 3Rs than today's 15 year olds.
Since the MoE caused the problem it is silly to expect them to turn it around even if they wanted to. Much more than just literacy needs to be addressed;the entire ideology needs overturning.
so if the 1990s were the key date then anyone under 45 will probably have come through this system - explains quite a lot.
PATs tests have been available for some time in the area of Punctuation and Grammar. This test is a useful diagnostic tool for assessing and teaching writing (although this was added to the original set of tests) ... which I think is the writing PAT being referred to here, and yes vocabulary is also tested, although many consider this more a reading test.
I cannot see why simply requiring that all schools administer the PATs, or some derivative of these, would not give the Ministry a good picture of achievement levels without the time and squabbles of building new tools, wkith all the controversy that will inevitably surround this.
It is true that some schools have continued to administer PATs but it is difficult to know how many because this data is not collected. Anecdotal impressions are that schools that use them tend to be schools already achieving at the upper end, and that even there the numbers using them are dwindling.
The tests do need an update, but that would be better than starting from scratch.
I notice that high performing Finland does not seem to do much official testing.
They do have however well qualified teachers who probably are academically minded and adhere to a well structured and comprehensive syllabus.
I tutored maths and was shocked to note even in a high decile area teachers had a slack attitude to following the ministry's guidelines. Most year 8 students were a full year and a half behind what was prescribed in maths. Local bookshops didn't stock year 8 NZ revision maths books at all and were reluctant to do so.
Even in the 1980s I taught my daughter fractions which she then taught her year 8 classmates because the teacher wasn't confident to do it. My grandson in year 5 was informed recently by the teacher that a remainder in division was the same as the decimal. One student I had was in the same composite class for
two years running with the same teacher who didn't like maths so just didn't teach any at all for two years.
Here is an enormous problem a couple of generations of primary teachers who are not proficient in the basics and also don't know how to teach them .
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