hey whiteflaginfinitetime, what is your email address? And please share the address of your blog here once you’ve started! Cheers.

I don’t know the answer to that, but what I have often wondered is why Douglas and Act didn’t push harder with ‘school vouchers’ ?

I’ve always been of the opinion that it would have been the best legacy Douglas ever left NZ.[I do think that what he done while with Labour was also needed.] Cheers Dave.

Personally though I have no objection to schools being rated and compared to one another and the results being public. That probably isn’t the official union line, but that’s my opinion. However I think we already have the best tool for comparing schools on a well-rounded basis, ERO reports. These reports take decile rating and local community into account and really work well. They no longer publish the decile rank of schools because that was confusing to many parents. I’ve personally had many conversations with people who thought decile ratings had something to do with school performance, not what they are, a pure rating of the socio-economic level of the students. The comparisons need to be based on something fairer than NS as they are. Secondary schools are ranked by Metro magazine every year based on NCEA results and I have no problem with that. NCEA covers a much wider range of subjects than NS take into account as well. I wouldn’t want to see a narrowing of our curriculum to focus only on English and Maths, especially since I teach in the social sciences!

Therein lies the second problem and it is more complex. In the US standardised testing has improved and there are now being implemented real national standards there. The problem is that a strict focus on literacy and numeracy has been detrimental to other subjects and the creation of a well-rounded education for all students. I have to admit to often wondering exactly what they do in some primary schools because of the state of many students when they arrive in secondary. However I think the primaries are in fact already feeling just the same when they get kids at age 5 who are already 2 years behind their peers to start.

I’m not part of that whole, you can’t tell a child their failing PC crowd. I would like to see better reporting to parents in primary schools. But I really don’t think NS are that helpful since the research I’ve seen says that if applied correctly by all schools they are actually set much too high and their level of moderation is poor so we don’t really know anymore than before where our kids are at.

Making a very long story short, not only was he not able to explain why he was against them, but revealed that at HIS school, the kids consistently did well above average – at all levels – on what I believe are called ASTLE scores…someone else will know what I am talking about. But I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone that!!

When I said “Well, clearly you and your staff are doing very well, and have nothing to fear” he just went through the same arguments against NS that I had already failed to understand. The gist of it – I think – was that all schools may not be able to achieve the same results as his…partly because they couldn’t attract teachers of the calibre he employs (it is a mid decile school in the country). When I said I thought that was part of the reason for establishing NS – to reward the better schools and their teachers – he just didn’t get it….or I didn’t get him…Or something.

Perhaps one of the defenders of the status quo in education who have joined us could explain: Why would a principal of a school at which the kids consistently achieve well above the average at all levels be afraid of being measured against other schools and other teachers?

The problem with our maths results falling is serious and here I absolutely agree with Hekia Parata. Our kids need to be learning basic arithmetic. They need to learn their times tables and use some old rote-learning methods to build the basis for the higher maths being pushed on them now.

whiteflag, I don’t think you should be judging PPTA on the poor performance of a single executive member at one meeting. There are now several exec members in their 20s and 30s. They aren’t exclusively oldies stuck in their ways, opposed to anything new. There is a whole network within the union set up for young teachers, set up to lobby for innovations in education. The PUM you attended was set up for the very narrow purpose of discussing the next collective agreement, it wasn’t all that PPTA does at all. Attend a regional meeting to get a better idea of the full scope of the work.

http://dianeravitch.net/2013/02/11/fun-and-games-in-reporting-about-the-new-orleans-non-miracle/

http://dianeravitch.net/2012/07/22/school-letter-grades-are-preposterous/

http://dianeravitch.net/category/new-orleans/

In particular, you may want to read the item about 5 down that list, where Ravitch discusses the “brutally frank ” report by the Cowen Institute, which was one of the organisations listed by DPF:

“As we all know, New Orleans has been presented as a national model of school reform: eliminate public schools, open lots of charters staffed by inexperienced young teachers, watch for miraculous results. But now a major promoter of the all-charter model–the Cowen Institute at Tulane University– has released a brutally frank report saying that things are not really working as hyped. Kudos to the researchers at Cowen for their candor.

66% of the New Orleans charters are rated D or F, so parents don’t really have enough good choices, the report admits. It seems that the all-charter model does not produce the transformation advertised by Kopp, Rhee, White, Jindal, Duncan, ALEC, et al,”

Finally, I find it quite amusing to hear ACT Party members laughing at someone who ran for public office and polled “only” 10% – a figure about 100 times ACT’s own level of popular support.

Now I am no apologist for US public schools. I have no doubt they were abyssmal in NO pre-Katrina and I know teacher unions in the US have in cases won ridiculous concessions that hurt the overall system. The lack of parental choice in the US system is a major failing and the level of bureaucracy is insane. It is made worse by the overlapping levels of authority because of the existence of state, county, city/town and federal education bodies. There is a reason the US ranks in the bottom half of the developed world for education despite massive spending.

While the charters in New Orleans today may be an improvement over what was there before, that isn’t really saying much. Louisiana’s government is infamously corrupt and inept and it would be difficult for any group involved in education there to do much worse. But the problem is that saying 78% of NO parents now have ‘choice’ under the current system is just wrong. They have to enter a lottery system where they list their top 8 choices of schools and then get told which one has accepted them. If they get an F or D rated school, too bad. If their school is closed for failing, the supposed ultimate accountability tool for charters, they may be forced to send their kids a significant distance across the city to another school, which may itself be rated a D or F. These schools often have much longer hours, starting before 8AM and finishing at 5PM. Add to that a lengthy commute and school every second Saturday and it is a major committment for a 6 or 7 year old.

Some of these schools have tests for entry, barring all students from attending and ensuring better test restults. Others are open-entry, as we are told all NZ ones must be, but they use a policy called “selective retention” to boost results. In this system the better schools use strict disciplinary measures to harrass students and parents into pulling their kids out. For example, students may be fined $5 for an infraction as simple as not walking in a perfectly straight line with their finger over their lips between classes. Repeated calls home to parents for even the smallest infractions wear the family out. This is an easy way to weed out the students and families least likely to succeed in the school, boosting test scores.

Many other US experts and even proponent of charter schools in the US have visited NZ and said that we don’t need US-style charters. We already have the flexibility and parental choice advantages within our current system. The biggest advantage of US charters over our system now is the elimination of collective agreements and with them the unions. Now again, I can see why US charter proponents are battling unions there. Those teacher unions have been damaging in certain ways and they are the biggest funders of US Democratic Party campaigns. But teacher unions in NZ are not the same. Incompetent teachers can be fired and regularly are, there are no massive pension benefits paid out for early retirees.

The most problematic myth out there is that our decile 1 and 2 schools, our South Auckland schools, are failing. They aren’t failing. Many of them are succeeding within the public system. There are programmes out there, like Te Kotahitanga, already proven to work at improving Maori and Pasifika outcomes in public schools. There are already special character schools and Maori immersion schools in the public system. There is already more parental choice here than in the charter system of New Orleans, where it’s more like a chance of getting a good school, than a choice. Even the pro-charter documentary “Waiting for Superman” states that only 1 in 5 charter schools is more succesful that state schools and shows how very poor the odds are students get chosen for the good ones in a lottery.

I am a new high school teacher from New Zealand that has already experienced the system for one year [I guess that makes my views anecdotal, but I hope people here take me seriously; I apologise that Harvard has not cited me to reinforce this blog comment]. Half way through my first year I joined the PPTA to protect myself from helicopter parents and management.

I went to my first PPTA meeting towards the end of the year, and have never been so demotivated to be a teacher [this was worst than my worst lecture at University]. It was run by old people [no disrespect] who clearly had no idea how to manage a meeting, or how to inspire me to continue educating my students for the weeks to come. I was read a document for 30 minutes [yes, this old lady was reading to us as if I was back in primary school sitting on the carpet], 2 minutes into this reading, I switched off and thought about Call of Duty, and the pie I just ate. I asked my colleague to summarise the reading at the end, and he told me it was about some pay and bargaining issues [we have to keep everything secret...].

My personal view of the PPTA is that they serve a purpose, which I believe is to protect my colleageues, and be a voice for us, but not once did they ask me how I felt about the system, or what the PPTA could be doing better to advance education in New Zealand. Perhaps this was to come in a brochure at the start of this year. The PPTA has helped my friends with their employment disputes and reallocation expenses. We have to give them credit there, but they have also failed in their approach to Charter Schools, for obvious reasons. I am pro Charter Schools, and so are other PPTA members. Just because I am a member of the PPTA, doesn’t mean that I agree with everything they say. This is a fundamental statement that I think everyone here should understand. We as teachers, see the flaws in the schools that we teach in, as I’m sure you do in the organisations you work for.

I could harp on about the flaws in the current state school model [test score rigging, ERO politics, poor professional development, no individualised learning programs, educators in management positions without business qualifications / experience], but instead I’m going to channel my positive energy into creating my own charter school in New Zealand. I’m below 26-years-old, and have run a successful business before during my High School days, and I’m looking forward at contributing to the New Zealand education system. I don’t want personal glory from this pursuit, I just want to ensure that New Zealand students are well educated, not just through tests, but their character as well.

I will post more, but for now, I’m going to start my own blog, and my own journey to building a charter school. By the way, it’s actually a lengthy process, I’ve got to prepare a full on business plan…if anyone wants to help, feel free to email me.

The New Zealand Public Service Association Inc. has 58336, roughly 7,000 more than the NZEI (51055). The Nurses union is not far off according to
http://www.dol.govt.nz/er/starting/unions/registration/UnionMembershipNumbers2012.pdf

There’s plenty of leftist scope for two dailies in a population of 60 million. But it was a fatal strategy for New Zealand – particularly when Fairfax had already staked out the centre-left ground.

Clearly a major scandal.

Or it might be that the 80% of people who put their kids into charter schools actually thought they’d back up their actions with their vote.

~~~~~~~~
If funding didn’t matter to the outcome of elections then Obama wouldn’t have raised a billion dollars.

Actually, I didn’t know that, I followed a link from elsewhere directly to the report.

but then how about your quote
“82% of parents with children enrolled at public charter schools gave their children’s schools an “A” or “B”, though only 48% of parents of children enrolled in non-chartered public schools assigned A’s or B’s to the schools their children attended”.

Two sentences on it says “the Cowen Institute is itself an advocate of charter schools , and is listed as a “Key Partner” of New Schools for New Orleans, a charter school advocacy group. Because of this conflict of interest and because of allegations of **BIAS** in the wording of the Cowen Institute’s questions, its survey may possess ***QUESTIONABLE VALIDITY***.” (quoting wikipedia but my emphasis)

It’s pretty hard to miss that.

Clearly a major scandal.

Or it might be that the 80% of people who put their kids into charter schools actually thought they’d back up their actions with their vote.

and this
“Report says New Orleans parents need better information for school choice to work”
http://theadvocate.com/news/neworleans/5142994-148/report-says-new-orleans-parents
Which basically says there are so few good schools in New Orleans that for most parents there only choice is a bad school.

But regarding the election…
87% of school board members spend less than $5,000 to run for office and Harper got 10% over that. But Sarah Usdin, who was the corporate reformers choice received more than ***$100,000*** in donations – some of which was from Joel Klein, Boykin Curry, a New York City hedge-fund manager and Reed Hastings of Netflix – none of them live in New Orleans or have kids in New Orleans schools. So Harper was outspent 20 to 1 but got 1 in 10 votes and that deserves some credit. (I guess there’s no need to say that Usdin was elected.)
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/10/31/10neworleans.h32.html?cmp=ENL-EU-SUBCNT

Anyway, her specialist area is special education and that is never a vote winner.

[DPF: You realise you are quoting a site, which lists Harper Royal as a contributor.]

PPTA bring in an “expert” on US charter schools to say that they have failed there.

Milt and his crew consistently declare, “but NZ isnt like the US so evidence over there doesnt count” and ‘but NZ already has a system similar to the charter school system in the US”.

But no surprises at all that you’ve had to point out the factual errors / the bias / the spin dutifully ‘reported’ by a former PPTA propagandist turned writer for the politically left, NZ Hoorald.

This article is merely proof that the term ‘investigative reporting’ has become an oxymoron in New Zealand.