Posts by Hilary Stace
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There was also a letter from Key with three children (two in private school uniforms and the other with an unfortunate AIG logo T-shirt) and a little message implying that other parents will soon be as lucky as parents like him in that their children will soon be tested regularly too. Can't find the link to that - maybe it was sent out with the leaflet?
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Here is an extract I received from the Ministry of Education in January in response to several questions I asked ( I checked - it's OK to share it). At the meeting I attended I was assured that schools should not do formal exam type/testing on one particular day (for which the info is already on the website so it was a matter of just learning that). However, it appears from the National Party promotional leaflet that they are interpreting standards as testing.
The Ministry of Education is committed to promoting and supporting effective teaching and learning for all students. This is embodied in The New Zealand Curriculum and it is important to emphasise that National Standards are primarily a teaching and learning tool. They are not an assessment tool although they do contribute to the assessment process. They illustrate where we might reasonably expect student performance to sit as students progress through years 1-8. Evidence from a range of assessment activity can then be considered in light of those signposts.
National Standards provide teachers, students and their parents with a consistent view of what is reasonably expected so that teaching and learning strategies can be adjusted accordingly. The intention is that they be used to guide teaching and learning not to label students as having achieved or not.
The standards need to be considered in context. It is recognised that not all students enter school at the same starting point in their learning. Neither do they necessarily progress in a steady and linear way or in the same way as each other. It isn’t about everyone reaching a minimum standard at each year level – it is about every student being assisted, supported and encouraged to progress as far as, and in the best way, possible. This is why National Standards policy stresses the importance of considering rate of progress as well as level of achievement reached. This is a forward looking approach that focuses on improving the rate of progress for students, regardless of their starting point and ensuring that all students are supported to reach their full potential – regardless of what that is.
In order to assess progress, teachers will need to use a range of approaches that are suited to the teaching and learning context. When assessing achievement and progress in relation to National Standards, teachers should draw on the full range of assessment information already gathered for teaching and learning purposes. The range of assessment activity should be sufficient to form a robust and defensible overall teacher judgement in relation to a National Standard and it should be chosen to suit both the nature of the learning being assessed and the varied characteristics and experiences of the students.
The Ministry does not intend to mandate the use of particular tools - this may serve, over time, to narrow the assessment focus and render specific tools as de facto National tests. It is a well accepted assessment principle that no one single source of information can provide an unequivocally accurate summary of a student’s achievement. National testing has the associated risk of inadvertently, promoting the management of the appearance of achievement and progress, rather than promoting authentic teaching approaches which rely on a strong learner focus and quality professional judgement.
There is a professional development plan in relation to National Standards. This was outlined as a “pull out” in the centre of the 7 December 2009 Education Gazette. It can also be found at: http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/National-Standards/Professional-development as a downloadable PDF document under the heading ‘Professional development opportunities diagram’. Specific detail of what will be covered in the workshops is currently being decided.
In addition, advice and guidance about assessment and suggested means of reporting to parents have been provided on the Assessment Community ‘Assessment Online’ on the Ministry website, Te Kete Ipurangi, (TKI). This includes examples and templates to illustrate ways that a school might incorporate students’ progress and achievement in relation to National Standards in written reports to parents. These are intended to support schools in deciding how they will give effect to the requirement to report. However, schools should meet the plain language reporting requirement in a way that is best suited to their own context
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I am still very concerned about the effects of this new regime on students with autism and other 'special' needs. As a consequence of this post I wrote on humans last year I was offered a meeting with Ministry of Education officials to reassure me and other autism advocates that it was about assessment that schools already did and not testing (the formal test situation can be extremely stressful for some autistic students and certainly doesn't assess their knowledge), and that schools that did such testing would be reprimanded by ERO.
So I was surprised to read in the recent National Party promotion of this policy, John Key (photographed with three children - two in their private school uniforms), telling parents they will be lucky to have this 'testing'.
No wonder there is confusion.
Additionally, the software for those new plain language reports with the Plunket-style graph (to get around those 'sugar coated' and 'politically correct' reports that parents get now, according to the NP leaflet), will apparently not be available till next year.
Sensible option, one would think, would be to delay, pilot, reassess.
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There is much this policy of national standards does not address. Instead of fighting what it is - we need to get on with being better than it.
Thanks for this Tim, and for loving teaching in spite of everything.
Russell alerted people to the mess that would happen in a post back in December 2008, when this policy went through all its stages under urgency in about 24 hours on the final sitting days before Christmas. No select committee hearing, no trialling. Such bad policy making. National standards will fade away eventually as just another fad like bulk funding, but teachers will still be teaching and students will still be learning.
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Bringing some themes together.
A new book called 'Marcelo in the real world' by Francisco X Stork has as narrator a 17 year old autistic boy from Boston. At one point he contrasts his special school to the local high school he is transitioning to: 'Public school students study in order to pass standardized tests. We studied what needed to be learned. I will need to learn the way they learn...' -
Dave Patrick: I sympathise. I was on a board at the time of the secondary teachers work to rule (strike?) for their big pay claim a few years ago.
The NZ School Trustees' Assocation was useless (they are after all an employers' association and act like one) and many of the local secondary boards had stopped belonging to the national association but remained members of the local STA which was a very active and united group (unfortunately they've changed the constitution since and it no longer works like that). That way we could work as a strong lobby group with all the parties: minister, ministry, education unions, parents. In my experience most boards have a good relationship with the principal (who is also a full member of the board) and respect his/her expertise as head of teaching and learning in the school, which helps in coming to an informed position.
You could try linking with local like minded boards for some united regional position which will make it easier for all parties.
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Emeritus Professor Ivan Snook has critiqued that ERO report about its claims about teaching and assessment and found that has been misinterpreted too,
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Emma: I'm really really sorry to hear about the lack of support for your daughter. There are a few of us here that can relate to that experience. So unfair. But your situation was probably not helped by the government cutting funding for sign language teachers in schools at the end of last year. It seems that those left in Christchurch will now have to cover the whole country.
The two topics of Russell's post today make my head hurt. The have been some good posts about standards on Red Alert lately. As Kelvin Davis, MP and former teacher, says, that keeping on measuring the pig does not make the pig fatter. And an experienced and usually good natured teacher explained to me recently just what it will mean for her :
- that it measures a very narrow piece of knowledge that suits a very limited type of learning style
-some of her children's parents will be very distressed to learn that their well-nurtured children are below or well below average at that particular task
-the software for assessing and reporting has not yet developed and won't be available for several months
-she and her colleagues are very angry at the patronising way this has been forced on them -
Most people going to the 7s are wearing minimal clothing with bare feet or jandals, and don't seem to be carrying anything like bags, sunscreen or money, as it would spoil the effect of the costume. So how do they manage?
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I hear there is a group of 101 dalmatians but haven't seen them yet.