Kiwiblog

Whale Oil reports:

I have been leaked emails show­ing the co-ordination and organ­i­sa­tion inter­nally of the so called Board of Trustees revolt. What is appar­ent is that this isn’t an action being orches­trated by Boards, it is instead being run by the NZEI and the unionised prin­ci­pals. The Boards seem not to have been informed let alone the par­ents of the schools named in the revolt.

Here are two emails from Perry Rush, Prinic­pal of Island Bay School. The first email makes it clear that Board Chairs may well have not been fully informed, or informed at all about the pend­ing action.

You can read the e-mails at Whale.

The principals of course are doing this during the working day, from work premises. In other words us taxpayers are funding their campaign.

A number of commenters have pointed out that the boards which have said they will not co-operate with the Ministry, did not consult any of the parents to whom they are accountable over their decisions. One parent sent me this letter they also sent to the Minister:

Two of my children attend Island Bay primary school, in southern Wellington.

The Board of Trustees recently provided a newsletter to parents advising that Island Bay school would not be complying with the requirements of the National Standards policy.  This appears to represent a change in position by the newly-elected Board, and replaces an earlier resolution (reproduced on the Principal’s Federation website opposing National Standards) in which the then Board decided to comply with the requirements of the policy, while formally resolving that it did not support the policy.

The newsletter to parents states that the Board has resolved to write to you and to the Secretary of Education directly informing you of the position.  They may not, however, have informed you of the poor process used in reaching the decision.  We requested copies of Board papers considered in reaching the Board’s decision, and were informed that there were none.  There was also no ex ante consultation with parents.  The school advertised an open meeting at which it was stated that the Principal would articulate his (well known) views on National Standards: in fact, this meeting proved to be simply a vehicle for the Principal to explain the Board’s decision.  We asked for a copy of the presentation slides used at this meeting and were refused -  almost certainly a breach of the Official Information Act.

As a parent and as a taxpayer, I support the Government’s apparent desire to lift the performance of our education system and, as part of that, to provide parents and taxpayers with better information on the performance of our schools.  I am relatively indifferent at present on the specifics of National Standards themselves, and regret that the National Party stepped away from, for example, the approach to education reform taken in its 2005 manifesto.

But the critical point now is that government policy, backed not only by a clear electoral mandate but also by legislation, must be, and be seen to be, implemented.  The Island Bay Board of Trustees, and their employee the Principal, are simply refusing to do that.  State schools are Crown entities.  Most parents have little effective choice but to use state schools.  We therefore expect that you and your ministry ensure that those charged with the management and governance of those Crown entities, which deliver formal education to our children, do their job.  I fully respect the right of individual members of the Board of Trustees, and of staff, to disagree with the policy and its application.  But they have an obligation -  not just a moral obligation, but nothing less than that – to implement it.  If they, as a matter of conscience, decide that they cannot implement it they must, as matter of moral obligation, resign.  But if they won’t, you have a responsibility to dismiss them.  You act for parents, for children, for taxpayers, and for the rule of law.  I therefore urge you to make clear to the Island Bay Board of Trustees that they must either quickly comply or face dismissal.  If there are no sanctions, the policy itself risks failing before it has ever been given a serious trial.

It is worth noting that very few schools are actually refusing to implement national standards. The 10% have merely said they will not tell the Ministry what their targets are.

I don’t think the Govt should sack non complying boards – that is what Simon Mitchell and co want – to be martyrs. I would just freeze discretionary funding. No access to capital funding for buildings or computers. Bottom of the priority list for connection to fibre etc etc.

Meanwhile Phil Goff has come out and shown he does not understand the issue. The Herald reports:

Labour leader Phil Goff said the system the Government was trying to ram into place wouldn’t succeed.

“Schools should be required to use the world-leading assessment tools already in place, not be required to use this untested, unclear and confusing system National is trying to impose on them,” he said.

Goff does not seem to understand that national standards is not a replacement for the world-leading assessment tools already in place. No school using them is being told or even encouraged to stop.

All national standards involve, are two additional steps.

1. You take the results of these assessment tools, and moderate them against the national standards to place a student in one of (off memory) four categories.
2. You report their position against the national standards – not instead of all the other info, but on top of

That’s it.

The unions, and Labour, just don’t want parents to have this additional info. Here are some comments made yesterday by parents:

As a parent of 4 “children” having gone through mixture of schooling – public, USA, private and tertiary. Our son (my step-son) went through the public school system. When he got to year 6, we discovered he was way behind and could barely write a sentence. All his reports to this point had stated that although he was low on the scale, he was still in the range of normal for his age – using their scale which was sent home with the report. His teachers had never expressed any problems at any of the parent teacher interviews my husband went to, till his teacher in Year 6 took the told us there was a real problem. His teacher for 3 years running prior to this was the Vice Principal of the school.

Sadly, it was too late by then, Early identification allows for early intervention.

Elizabeth Binning in the Herald reports:

More than 200 schools are refusing to introduce part of the Government’s mandatory national standards next year after voting “no confidence” in the system.

Boards of trustees of at least 225 schools – out of a national total of 2018 – say it is time to take action against the standards, which they say are “flawed, confusing and unworkable” and need to be completely reviewed.

So around 10% of the schools boards have succumbed to the NZEI and NZPF campaign. And in fact they are not refusing to intrdouce national standards – they are just not going to tell the Ministry what targets they are setting.

Parents at those schools will it seems still get reporting against national standards in their reports. I imagine this is because parents overwhelmingly have said they do want this information.

Balmoral School, in Auckland, is one of the schools which says it will not implement any part of the standards.

Board chairman Simon Mitchell said the issue was not about having standards, as most schools already did, but that national standards would not help underachievers and would instead result in children who did not meet the required level being labelled failures.

Simon Mitchell. Hmmn, an interesting name. Is that the same Simon Mitchell who is a Labour Party activist, sought the Mt Albert nomination, and infamously known as the man who purchased the forged painting in Paintergate and got it destroyed. Mitchell is also the lawyer (if the same Mitchell) who told employees not to accept a job with a company of fewer than 20 employees due to the trial period law. Now that it being extended to all employers, will he advise employees to never seek a job with anyone?

What a coincidence.

The Listener’s editorial:

Hands up those who agree with this proposal. Not only should there be national standards in schools, but the government should pay schools bonuses of up to $100,000 if they demonstrate improvements in the literacy and numeracy achievement standards of their pupils.

It’s no surprise, perhaps, that teacher unions have denounced the plans and immediately threatened to boycott the tests, talking of their concerns about “damaging league tables”.

What is a surprise is that all this is happening in Australia.

How is it, one might ask, that in New Zealand the introduction of national standards in primary schools has been denounced by teacher unions as nothing more than right-wing ideology while across the Tasman, the minister driving this “education revolution” is none other than the Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard? In her bid to improve school standards, Gillard has already muscled aside one of Australia’s most powerful left-wing outfits – the Australian Education Union – to ensure all school results are published on the My School website. This with the express purpose of identifying poorly performing schools.

Indeed. National Standards are just common sense. They require no change to current testing or assessment. They just require one additional step – to moderate the school data onto a national standard and add on one extra page to the school report with the national standard data also.

Frankly they are no big thing, and the opposition from entrenched interests is actually about league tables, not national standards.

Talking of her passion and commitment to ensuring every child has access to good schooling regardless of their background, Gillard spoke at the launch of the website earlier this year of the danger of schools quietly underperforming. “No one ever knows and no one ever does anything about it,” she said. “But children only get one chance at school.”

In New Zealand, where many principals are now promising to step up their campaign against national standards, it was Pita Sharples who this week talked of under-performing schools. A lot of schools, said Sharples, fail to monitor the achievements of Maori students, fail to use the professional support offered to them to help raise standards and fail to involve Maori families in the education of Maori students.

Absolutely. Despite what is said, we do not know well enough which students are failing and which schools are failing.

Contrast his statements with that of primary teachers union spokesperson, NZEI president Frances Nelson, who recently claimed that the Education Minister Anne Tolley had distorted data to “manufacture a crisis in education”. There is indeed a crisis but it is not of Tolley’s creation. The facts speak for themselves: 15,000 New Zealand students end up leaving school without NCEA level two and 7900 without level one.

Although our top performers are among the best in the OECD, it is the long tail of underachievement that causes alarm.

This is what the NZEI says is not a problem. 15,000 students every year leaving school without even NCEA Level 2.

This is not an imaginary crisis. In this country, almost 50% of Maori students and 35% of Pasifika students leave school without level two NCEA. In all, 29% of the students who will be leaving school at the end of next month will leave without this qualification. It is the minimum qualification that any young New Zealander needs to succeed in further study or skilled employment.

And this is the status quo the education unions defend.

The NZ Principal’s Federation has declined the offer of going on a working group to identify ways the national standards can be improved, and instead has launched a public campaign against them. What I love is how weak their campaign page is. Here are their five main complaints:

1. Won’t tell you the whole story about how your child and school are doing
2. Will harm, not help, children and schools
3. Will confuse, not inform parents
4. Won’t fix poverty, unemployment, crime and all the other factors that feed underachievement in our schools
5. Will be demoralising and demotivating for the students who need help most

No 1 is a silly irrelevancy. Of course they won’t tell the only story. They are not meant to. They are not to replace school reports – they are simply an extra page that must be included.

No 2 is an ideological assertion. The fact is that schools which are identified as having students who are not at national standard levels, will in fact attract some extra modest funding.

No 3 is outrageous. Legions of parents complain about current school reports. An extra page showing whether or not their child is below, at or above the national standard for that age is bloody useful – and parents have overwhelmingly said they would like this info.

And with No 4 it won’t stop climate change either. So what.

No 5 is ridicolous hyperbole. It’s like saying you can never tell anyone they failed an exam in case it demoralises them. Any teacher worth their salt can communicate results in a sensitive manner, and regardless how cruel is it to have kids who are failing to never be told they are failing and going to leave school unable to functionally read or write unless something is done.

The sad thing is that the NZPF are not really against national standards per se. They are against league tables. If the Govt outlawed league tables, their opposition would disappear overnight. So their campaign is intellectually very dishonest.

UPDATE: A very pertinent comment is worth highlighting:

My daughter has dyslexia and auditory processing disorder, both diagnosed in Year 5. In Year 5 she was three years behind in reading. At the start of Year 6 she was four years behind in writing. Yet for the first four years of her schooling her teachers told me she was doing fine, she didn’t need any support and was “not the worst in the class”. Meetings with teachers and school management got me nowhere. It was only when I paid $500 for an educational psychologist’s report to prove to the school that she wasn’t “doing fine” that they admitted she had difficulties and gave her some support.

One year later she is now two years AHEAD in reading and only one year behind in writing. (In addition to support at school I pay for individual dyslexia tuition.) According to NZEI the schools already know which kids are “failing” and National Standards won’t help to identify them. Either my daughter’s teachers didn’t know, or they lied to me when I asked them.

According to NZPF I will be confused to be told the truth about my daughter. I wish my daughter’s teachers had told me about her difficulties much earlier, and without being prompted by an expensive educational psychologist’s report. Then I could have arranged dyslexia tuition earlier.

According to NZPF telling my daughter she is “failing” will demoralise and demotivate her. I have found the reverse to be true – in the past she used to talk about “the smart kids”. Now that she knows there is a reason that schoolwork is more difficult for her, her self-esteem has improved enormously.

This happens to far too many families – they are not told there is a problem until it is almost too late.

Karl du Fresne writes:

I’m surprised more hasn’t been made of the contemptible schoolyard bullying reported last week by TV3 political editor Duncan Garner. Presumably it was overtaken by the much bigger drama unfolding around David Garrett and ACT.

An agitated Witana, an executive member of the Principals’ Federation, then turned on an extraordinary performance in front of Garner, gesticulating and speaking directly to the TV3 camera, saying things like “Don’t make me look terrible Duncan” and “Don’t make me dislike you.” He looked so emotionally unstable that Garner could have been excused for feeling slightly threatened himself – just as parents with children under Witana’s care might have been excused for wondering whether he needed to take stress leave.

And it is no surprise that so few teachers, principals or schools will speak publicly in favour of national standards. They know what will happen if they do.

Interviewed for TV3 News, Newman (whom Kiwiblog’s David Farrar reports is seeking the Labour Party nomination for Whangarei) tried to skew the issue, suggesting that principals and boards of trustees were not being allowed to question and criticise education policy.

I’m not aware of anyone trying to deny them that right. The issue here is one of intimidation and harassment of a colleague who dared dissent from the union line.

Intolerance of minority or opposing views can be a deeply unattractive aspect of trade union culture, and it’s not the first time we’ve seen evidence of it in the teaching unions. Attempts to introduce bulk funding in secondary schools in the 1990s were sabotaged by blatant teacher intimidation of elected school boards and the worst shame of it was that the Bolger government was too gutless to intervene.

School that took it up were threatened with black-listing, and that their schools may become ungovernable.

My lesson from this, is that National’s error was to make bulk funding a choice. It should just have been announced and implemented.

I’d love National to have a 2011 education policy that fully bulk funds all schools, allows parents maximum choice in schools, and brings in full performance pay for teachers.

Whatever the background factors, nothing excuses Witana and Newman for behaving like a couple of gang enforcers. It’s intolerable enough that teacher activists should arrogantly defy an elected government, and in so doing place themselves above the democratic process that other public servants submit to; but it becomes even more offensive when they collectively monster anyone brave or rash enough to defy them.

The irony, of course, is that schools are supposedly united in their determination to stamp out bullying. It’s officially not condoned in the playground, but a different standard seems to apply in staff rooms.

Footnote: Several of the anonymous comments attacking Donnelly on the TV3 website clearly came from teachers, some of whom displayed only a primitive grasp of grammar and spelling. Herein may lie one of the reasons for the almost hysterical resistance to national standards

Heh well spotted.

I blogged a link on 31 August to two principals discussing national standards. One principal was a campaigner against them (and head of the Canterbury Principals Assn) and the other was a principal who supports the standards.

Duncan Garner reports on the abuse and bullying Donna Donnelly has received for daring to say she has no problems with national standards:

Tikipunga principal Donna Donnelly supports standards in numeracy in literacy. Neighbouring principal Peter Witana, an executive member of the New Zealand Principals Federation (NZPF), does not.

So he sent her a strongly worded email.

“It’s a type of bullying and I don’t accept it,” says Ms Donnelly.

Mr Witana told Ms Donnelly her support “reeks of arrogance and ignorance”, that she should be “sacked on the spot”, and that she should “get off her backside and look closer”.

Another principal told her to watch her back.

Witana is basically a union heavy. How dare he say she should be sacked, because she refuses to agree with the union.  If anyone should be facing the sack – it should be him. What sort of role model is he for pupils, when he is exposed as a ranting bully.

And Duncan reports in a follow up story:

But Donnelly continues to be targeted.

Another Northland principal Pat Newman also emailed  Donnelly for taking the spat to 3 News; he wrote;

“It was despicable. I am so sad that you call yourself a principal. When you left the Waikato the message from many of your colleagues was that you were the ‘best export they had ever made.’”

Mr Newman sounds like a spiteful 10 year old. He is also a Labour Party actvist who is seeking Labour’s nomination for Whangarei. Meet your future Education Minister!!

The vast majority of schools have just got on with implementing national standards. But consider if you are one of those principals. Would you dare to state a view that is contrary to the union? So do not be surprised when you only hear from one side of teh debate – the other side have been scared off.

On Breakfast last week, Paul Henry interviewed two principals – one is a campaigner against national standards (and head of Canterbury Principals Union), and the other is a ordinary principal.

I recommend people go watch the video, to see the contrast in attitudes.

Marginal Revolution blogs an amazing story from the LA Times:

The Times obtained seven years of math and English test scores from the Los Angeles Unified School District and used the information to estimate the effectiveness of L.A. teachers — something the district could do but has not.

The Times used a statistical approach known as value-added analysis, which rates teachers based on their students’ progress on standardized tests from year to year. Each student’s performance is compared with his or her own in past years, which largely controls for outside influences often blamed for academic failure: poverty, prior learning and other factors….

In coming months, The Times will publish a series of articles and a database analyzing individual teachers’ effectiveness in the nation’s second-largest school district — the first time, experts say, such information has been made public anywhere in the country.

One can almost hear the alarm bells going off in NZEI and PPTA offices around the country. You thought school league tables were bad – how about teacher league tables. And worse of all, ones that take into account outside influences, so that they do measure the impact a teacher has over time.

This graphic is not a mockup with fake names and made up data. These are two real teachers, and their real performance.

After a single year with teachers who ranked in the top 10% in effectiveness, students scored an average of 17 percentile points higher in English and 25 points higher in math than students whose teachers ranked in the bottom 10%. Students often backslid significantly in the classrooms of ineffective teachers, and thousands of students in the study had two or more ineffective teachers in a row.

And consider how fiercely teacher unions fight against performance pay.

The conclusion is one that strikes home:

We cannot simultaneously claim, however, that teachers are vitally important for the future of our children and also that their effectiveness should not be measured.  As systems like this become more common students will benefit enormously and so will teachers. Moreover, I see this as a turning point. Once parents have this kind of information who will allow their child to be in a class with a teacher in the bottom ranks of effectiveness?

Oh my God. Allowing parents to choose what schools their kids go to. When will this lunacy end.

And the from the LA Times article itself:

Contrary to popular belief, the best teachers were not concentrated in schools in the most affluent neighborhoods, nor were the weakest instructors bunched in poor areas. Rather, these teachers were scattered throughout the district. The quality of instruction typically varied far more within a school than between schools.

This has been stressed back home also.

Although many parents fixate on picking the right school for their child, it matters far more which teacher the child gets. Teachers had three times as much influence on students’ academic development as the school they attend. Yet parents have no access to objective information about individual instructors, and they often have little say in which teacher their child gets.

Parents should not get any choice in which school their kids attend, let alone which teachers they have. This is heresy.

Other studies of the district have found that students’ race, wealth, English proficiency or previous achievement level played little role in whether their teacher was effective.

But it is all about the decile they live in!

No one suggests using value-added analysis as the sole measure of a teacher. Many experts recommend that it count for half or less of a teacher’s overall evaluation.

This is key. How you improve performance on such tests is not the only factor that should be taken into account. It is not a perfect measure. But it is still a pretty damn useful one.

On average, Smith’s students slide under his instruction, losing 14 percentile points in math during the school year relative to their peers districtwide, The Times found. Overall, he ranked among the least effective of the district’s elementary school teachers.

Told of The Times’ findings, Smith expressed mild surprise.

“Obviously what I need to do is to look at what I’m doing and take some steps to make sure something changes,” he said.

Isn’t that great? Rather than get defensive and decry the analysis, he is going to re-evaluate his teaching methods.

And also:

Still, Caruso said the numbers were important and, like several other teachers interviewed, wondered why she hadn’t been shown such data before by anyone in the district.

“For better or worse,” she said, “testing and teacher effectiveness are going to be linked.… If my student test scores show I’m an ineffective teacher, I’d like to know what contributes to it. What do I need to do to bring my average up?”

The real scandal is that it took a newspaper to do, what the education profession could not, or would not, do.

From their latest newsletter:

The NZPF took the approach of engaging with the Minister to find a solution including a complete review of the National Standards system in partnership with the sector. Our preference remains still to work with the Minister and sector but until there is a commitment to work in a true and meaningful partnership, we can’t, in good faith engage with her. We do however leave the door open if the Minister should ever want to enter a partnership with us and the sector in the future. But we can’t just wait, doing nothing.

This is hilarious. Do you know why? The NZPF is refusing to actually detail their concerns about the standards. They keep saying they are flawed, but have declined every request to detail how exactly they are flawed. They say they will not detail the flaws, unless the Government agrees in advance to suspend the standards.

Their idea of a partnership, seems akin to a bank robber asking the bank manager for a partnership – hand over all your cash and then we will lower our weapon.

During last weekend’s executive meeting it passed a motion in respect of our moral obligation to our children which read NZPF encourages schools to take a principled stance on National Standards until such time as concerns are successfully resolved. By ‘principled stance’ the executive means making decisions and taking actions in the very best interests of the children of New Zealand and these may include moral and ethical considerations.

A principled stand – ha ha ha ha. And “best interests of the children of NZ” – they should write comedy. They are going to disrupt as many schools as possible to prevent parents from knowing how their kids are doing against a national standard, and claim this is to protect the children. My God.

National Standards are the most serious issue that the NZPF has encountered in its 27 year history. From many quarters there are warnings about hurtling down this path.

The most serious issue? Incredible. They are in fact a minor additional requirement, that school reports have an extra page where current reports are moderated so they can be measured against a national benchmark.

A couple of months ago a newspaper quoted a concerned parent who was unhappy with national standards. They were in fact an NZEI employee.

Now earlier this month, we had another concerned parent attack national standards. A Steve O’Connor in the ODT.

Now I may be wrong, but I reckon he is the same Steve O’Connor who is on Grassroots Labour. Nothing wrong with that, but when you write op eds attacking the Government, you and the newspaper should disclose political affiliations.

I also guess Mr O’Connor, is the same one who worked for Clare Curran.

It makes you wonder how many of these concerned parents and citizens always quoted by the media, have strong party affiliations and involvement they they never disclose.

I thought readers may enjoy this helpful newsletter form the NZEI on national standards.

NZEI and NS

The part that is of most significance is the statement that NZEI believes there are clear links between National Standards and the position the Ministry has taken in the primary teacher and principal bargaining.

What this means is that the NZEI is going to go on strike unless they get a massive pay increase as “compensation” for national standards.

It’s never really been about national standards. No one could seriously think they are a bad thing to do. It’s all about league tables and pay.

Paul Holmes makes a fascinating comparison in yesterday’s HoS column:

Well, how did it get to this? After decades and decades and billions and billions of dollars it turns out about a million New Zealanders don’t have the numeracy and literacy skills to make a living or make a go of life.

And the learned education experts, the principals, are doing their damnedest to undermine their minister who simply wants to introduce a national standards system so that a parent in Masterton knows how their child is doing in relation to a child in Kerikeri.

I can think of only one reason they want to fight it. They are alarmed that we may be on the point of finding out.

And then after talking about Mel Brooks’ The Producers, he goes back to 1986:

It is a lesson for broadcasting interviewers and I learnt it myself during those bitter months back in 1986 when the Homosexual Law Reform Bill was exciting the most extreme debate up and down the country.

The Happy Clappy churches and the awful, proscriptive Dutch Reformed Church were passionately, almost fascistically, opposed.

They put up for interview on radio and television programmes all kinds of preachers and visiting “experts” who spoke with hellfire authority about the evils and what men would start doing to one another if the bill passed into law, as if it were going to make homosexuality compulsory. They quoted great tracts of scripture to back it all up. It was insane.

But I realised one morning in 1986, when I was interviewing one of these frightened, hate-filled types, that there was no point arguing on his territory.

Holmes has wonderfully compared the teacher unions to the anti HLR forces in 1986. If they complain too much, I am sure he will artfully point out he never directly compared them. Instead he just allowed the readers to connect the dots.

The Herald reports:

A Dunedin school and two in Invercargill are believed to have categorically refused to implement the Ministry of Education’s national standards.

The School Trustees Association has warned the schools’ boards of trustees they could be sacked if they do not back down.

They are among eight schools nationwide which have taken a stance against national standards, and NZSTA president Lorraine Kerr said the boards of the schools would face consequences if they continued to rebel against the standards “in much the same way there are consequences if we break any law”.

However, she said boards were unlikely to be replaced until at least next year when schools would be required to report data to the Ministry of Education.

There are over 2,000 schools in NZ, and the over whelming majority are getting on with the job of implementing national standards.

Personally I wouldn’t sack the boards of the eight refuseniks. That is what they want – to be martyrs. They are obviously more concerned with making a stand, that ensuring parents get more useful information.

Instead of sacking them, I would just reduce the operational grant to that school. If a school refuses to obey the law, well then they have effectively left the public system. Unfair to penalise the teachers, so keep paying them, but whack say 50% off the operations grant and freeze and capital expenditure approval. The board will then have to decide if they want to do what is best for the school, or continue to be amateur politicians. Also allow the pupils to enrol at any other nearby school.

Why should the taxpayer fund a school that refuses to obey the law?

The SST reports:

A VISITING British principal, famous for transforming a failing London school into an educational success, has come out in support of national standards in schools.

Sir Paul Grant, who will address educationists and government officials in New Zealand this week, says national standards make teachers and schools accountable.

National standards were needed to measure pupils’ progress and as benchmarks of schools’ performance, Grant told the Sunday Star-Times from London.

Which explains why Labour and the teacher unions are so oppossed. Accountability is a bad word!

The Wanganui Chronicle reports:

Parent Stephanie Mills said the new standards were totally untried  and had been developed in  three months without involvement from the community and teachers.

By pure coincidence a Stephanie Mills is the NZEI Communications Director.

Do you suppose they could be the same person?

And why then does the Wanganui Chronicle not mention this rather pertinent fact? Were they not told, or did they just think the public don’t need to know?

Audrey Young writes:

I saw first hand yesterday why teachers are having a difficult job trying to win the argument against Education minister Anne Tolley about national standards. …

It’s not that Tolley was that brilliant. She sometimes sounds like she has had 10 briefings too many from Ministry of Education officials when she falls into jargon like “unpacking” the national standards.

But she has better grip on the subject than the last time Mallard made mince meat of her in the House over moderation of national standards. And once parents join her in the debate, she wins, as was evident yesterday.

And the parents are what this is all about.

Tolley talked about her own kids – two of whom had been “very bright but very lazy” and her five year-old grandson who has started school in Rotorua. He had told her matter of factly that he was now in group 3 reading, not group 4 where he had started – the point being that kids knew exactly where they were in relation to other kids.

That reminds me of my first year at school. I joined the class in September and it was assumed would need to catch up in reading with my classmates so was placed in Group 4 (of 5). By December I had moved into Group 3, Group 2 and then Group 1, and finally because I was such a good reader myself and one other were placed in our own special group where we could read outside unsupervised. I was so proud of that, after having started in Group 4.

That was a rebuttal to one of the Onslow kids who had Tolley on about the brutality of the new reporting system to parents that would show them (and the kids) exactly where they were in relation to others and could be discouraging.

What is brutal, is allowing kids to drop out of school unable to read or write.

The Principals Federation is doing a so called survey of parents on National Standards. Of course it has no scientific merit as it is not a random sample (they are promoting through some schools), but that is not the worst part of it. Get a grip on these so called questions:

Do you think that people should be concerned about bringing in an untried, untested system into our schools, when similar systems have failed overseas?

This is what the NZPF thinks is a balanced question!

Do you think it is wrong to hold schools totally responsible for students’ learning when it is acknowledged that there are many other circumstances beyond the control of the school?

And no one is saying they do hold schools totally responsible. But the NZPF seems to thinks schools have no responsibility at all.

Do you believe that the money being spent on National Standards would be better spent on world-leading programmes, developed in NZ, that we know work with students who are struggling to learn?

This should win some sort of award for the most biased unprofessional questions ever asked in a survey.

That of course has not stopped some principals using taxpayer resources to send it onto parents.  I’ve had half a dozen parents contact me to complain. My advice to any parent who gets the survey is to complain to the School Board Chair. The Dom Post reports on Karori School:

Karori Normal School has apologised to parents after complaints about it sending home a petition protesting against the Government’s national standards.

The school has also been scolded for sending parents a Principals Federation survey about the standards, which was branded “ridiculous, biased rubbish” by a parent. The survey features 10 questions, including whether parents thought it was wrong that children as young as five or six would be branded as failing, and if they were concerned that boards of trustees had been threatened with the sack if they disagreed about implementing the standards.

Karori Normal principal Diane Leggett, a member of the national executive of primary teachers’ union NZEI, which opposes the standards, said she did not mean to offend anyone by sending out the material.

Mrs Leggett told The Dominion Post that she assumed the Principals Federation survey would be unbiased and sent it out without checking it. “It was an error on my part. I would not have sent it out if I knew it was so obviously biased. I should have checked it first.”

Well if even a member of the NZEI national executive says the NZPF survey is obviously biased, I think we can all agree it has no worth as a survey and is in fact disguised propaganda.

I’ve often said in the debate about league tables that the solution is not to ban the media from obtaining school achievement data under the Official Information Act, or even more ridiculously not having the Government even collate the data itself.

The solution is to provide good and useful information, to counter any league tables done in a simplistic fashion by the media. You fight bad information with good information 0- not by banning all information about primary school achievement.

The Herald reported at the weekend:

The education expert who first advised the Government on school standards is about to start work on plans for a national league table system, which he hopes will satisfy parents and teachers.

Professor John Hattie, who was called to Wellington last month by Prime Minister John Key to explain his concerns about national standards in primary schools, said the Government’s “wait and see” approach to league tables wasn’t good enough.

He did not support league tables, but the introduction of national standards in reading, writing and maths made them inevitable, so it was important to work out a fair solution.

He planned to work with other researchers to produce an independent paper on school league tables this year, suggesting what information parents could reasonably expect.

Professor Hattie, of Auckland University, said results could be shown in context, such as how a school compared with others in its decile. For instance, he helped Metro magazine devise fairer comparisons between NCEA results in its annual survey of Auckland secondary schools.

Superb. This is exactly the right answer. What I would do is plug all the data into a database that will allow people to get decile comparisons and the like.

Last year, the top school on test results alone was the $16,000-a-year private girls’ college St Cuthbert’s, but the best school on improved student achievement was decile 4 Mt Roskill Grammar.

And that is the data which would be really interesting. We’ll see what level pupils are at when they first enter primary school. What I want to know is which schools start with a majority of kids below the national standards for their age, but by the time they leave that school they are above the national standards. Because they are the schools who make the biggest difference.

Principals Federation president Ernie Buutveld said Professor Hattie’s idea was worth exploring and he believed many teachers and principals would like to be involved.

Much better attitude than trying to ban publication or refuse to even let the Government have data on how schools are doing.

The Herald reports:

Like it: 73 per cent
Hate it: 14 per cent

This is a Nielsen online poll of Herald readers. Not as reliable as a phone poll, but I doubt the results would change a lot if it was.

The key findings:

Those in favour of national standards:

YES – 73.2%
NO – 13.8%
DON’T KNOW – 13%

Do you understand how the new system works?

FULLY – 11.9%
PARTIALLY – 61.8%
NOT AT ALL – 26.2%

The effect of national standards on your child:

GOOD – 53.9%
BAD – 36.5%
NONE – 9.5%

Will standards create school ‘league tables’ for parents to plan their child’s schooling?

YES – 56.3%
NO – 17.1%
DON’T KNOW – 26.6%

Would that be a bad thing?

YES – 38.8%
NO – 47.9%
DON’T KNOW – 13.4%

John Roughan also writes:

This week the New Zealand Educational Institute, the union that protects these people’s jobs, has put a bus on the road to oppose new national standards of reading, writing and maths that would be tested and the results reported in a way everyone could understand.

It is the last bit the NZEI really hates. Schools already test kids constantly for their own purposes but they are not supposed to share the results with parents. They’ll provide your child’s test scores if you know to ask but they’d rather you didn’t.

Roughan correctly ascertains that this is a battle about reporting, not about testing. Should parents get told how well their kids are doing in clear language? Labour and the unions say no.

All of this is anathema to educational theorists and the teachers’ unions that want us to believe no school is better than any other, no teacher weaker than any other, and no child fails in the system they control.

And they do control it. State education is a law unto itself. Industries are normally answerable either to voluntary paying customers or to elected governments depending on how they are financed.

The NZEI seems to think the only role for the Government is to shut up and pay the salaries of their members.

I blogged yesterday on Maria English’s world beating achievement of topping the world two years in a row in the Cambridge International English exams. She was marked higher than 90,000 students from 100 countries.

What was really nice in the comments is that almost everyone put politics aside, and was genuinely pleased and admiring of such a wonderful achievement for a New Zealand student.

Now you would think the PPTA would also be pleased that a New Zealand secondary school student has done so well. But, instead this is what they twittered:

Government ministers show support for private businesses involved in education

with a link to the TV3 story on Maria and another story.

Isn’t that just such an appalling and small minded sneer. They don’t care at all about a student being top of the world. They just hate the fact she is at a private school, or took part in a private exam.

I think it is useful that the PPTA reminds us of what matters to teacher unions, because Colin Espiner has written a blog where he basically calls for the NZEI to have a veto over education policy on NZ.

But you can’t bulldoze your way through a sector as highly unionised as teaching without taking the unions with you. …

I’d be happy for the Government to explore the idea further, but only in conjunction with the actual practitioners in the classrooms. Ramming policy through in spite of their strenuous objections makes me uneasy. After all, this isn’t a fight over wages and conditions. Teachers’ objections are based on educational reasons, and while there may be some vested self-interest involved, I’m prepared to accept the NZEI has some valid concerns.

I don’t even know where to start. How about with an analogy. Would Colin advocate that the Government should not make any changes to economic policy unless Treasury agrees?

Should there be no change to telecommunications policy unless Telecom agrees?

As the PPTA shows, they are not concerned about educational outcomes. They are concerned about their members. Their objections are not based on education reasons. The NZEI President has said that if the Government removed school achievement data from the Official Information Act, their opposition to national standards would disappear. This is a battle about league tables, or in other words freedom of information.

I would have thought if the Government was really serious about improving the quality of primary schools, it might be pumping money into cutting class sizes. Curiously, however, it’s done the opposite, and teacher/pupil ratios are increasing.

Colin must have missed the Hattle report which concluded that class size is not a major factor – it is the quality of the teacher.

Even putting the educational arguments aside, however, buying a fight with the teacher unions is bad politics. Key seems to think he can turn public opinion against the NZEI on this one but I think this is unlikely. Far better to take the union with him than try to bash it into submission.

Colin makes the mistake of thinking there is a choice. Unless the Government amends the OIA to restrict access to school achievement data, then the union will never ever back national standards. The call for trials is a red herring designed to delay.  I would bet several billion dollars that at the end of any trials the NZEI would declare that the standards can not be implemented.

It’s almost as if Key is tired of playing Mr Nice Guy and wants to show the steel behind the “relaxed” Prime Minister.

That’s his call, but I think he’s picked the wrong issue and the wrong target. The NZEI is a formidable foe.

Colin has it the wrong way around. It is not the Government picking a fight. A group of taxpayer funded staff are refusing to implement the legal requirements of the Government. They are the ones picking the fight.

Colin thinks the standards are abotu assessment, but for most schools there will be no change in assessment. They are about plain English reporting. Colin said:

Are national standards a good idea? I admit I’m not sure. As a parent, I would like more information about how my child’s doing. But I don’t need to see primary schools ranked in league tables. I accept that a school in Khandallah or Fendalton or Parnell is going to do better in such rankings than those in Naenae, or Aranui, or Penrose.

That says more about simple demography and socioeconomic status than it does about the quality of its teachers.

But I’ve yet to be convinced that introducing more assessment is going to somehow magically improve the quality of our school system, or make us better at maths.

Colin confuses league tables (that the Government has no intention of publishing – it is Colin’s fellow journalists who produce league tables) with national standards and reporting. And it is not about more assessment, it is about clear data.

There are two major benefits from the national standards – individual data and group data. Let me explain.

Parents will benefit from individual data. They will have a clear report card that informs them if their child is achieving at the minimum level necessary to be on track to leave school able to read and write and do maths. If their child is not performing to that level, it means they and the school can discuss what steps can be taken to try and lift the performance.

The Government’s election policy also made it clear that there will be additional resources dedicated to students not making the standards, so that they chances of improving are enhanced.

From 2012, the Government will also start collecting group data – by that I mean data on each school, and maybe even teacher. Not to publish league tables with, but to analyse. Now you may wonder what is the use of this data.

Well the Dim Post had a link to this article in The Atlantic about research into what makes a great teacher. They have collected masses of data on teachers and achievement to try and isolate the major factors. I highly recommend people read the entire article.

At present, there is no useful comparable data at primary school level. National standards will provide information which will allow comparisons to be done. I don’t mean comparisons between schools, but dozens or hundreds of variables can be analysed.

That is how you then raise educational standards. Not by giving a policy veto to unions that see it as a bad thing that a New Zealand student tops the world!

Today’s Dom Post editorial:

International research shows that New Zealand pupils at year 5 level – the old standard three – read better on average than their international peers.

Education Ministry figures show that more than a quarter of teenagers leave school without the minimum qualifications necessary to undertake an apprenticeship.

One statistic is a credit to teachers, the other a blight on their reputations.

NZ compares, on average, well internationally. Our top students are a match for the top anywhere in the world. But our bottom 20% do far far worse, than the bottom 20% of other countries. The left go on a lot about income inequality – well it would be nice to hear the same concern for education inequality – the gap between our best and worst is one of the biggest in the OECD.

Those conclusions are backed up by an Education Review Office survey of 212 schools last year which found that 70 per cent of teachers teaching first-year and second-year pupils were doing a good job, but 30 per cent had little or no idea of the importance of getting their pupils off to a good start with reading and writing. What’s more, the review office said, those teachers had only a rudimentary grasp of how to teach reading and writing, set “inappropriately low expectations” and passed up opportunities to motivate, engage and extend children.

And the purpose of national standards is not to demonise teachers who are not performing as well as they should. It is to help identify both students and teachers who need assistance.

The new standards should not be regarded as the goal of the education system, but the minimum set of skills with which children should be equipped.

Exactly. The standards are a minimum. They are not a substitute for a comprehensive education.

The existing system is failing a significant number of pupils. It needs an overhaul.

The Government is to be congratulated for acting to provide parents, teachers, schools and education authorities with more useful information. The teachers’ union should stop standing in the way of progress.

Sadly that will not happen so long as the leadership treats itself as the provisional wing of the Labour Party.

TV One News kept referring to the National Standards as being about whether a kid is beow or above the national average.

This is totally wrong. The standards are about saying this is the level we think an x year old should be able to read and write to this level.

In an ideal world 100% of kids will be meeting the national standards. This is very different to comparing people to an average, where by default around half the people will be below average.

It is not about comparing one kid to another. It is about saying whether kids are on track to leaving primary school able to read, write and do maths.

The NZ Herald editorial:

That is particularly true of written reports to parents. National has promised to make those more specific and useful. The Government should not compromise that policy for the sake of pacifying a sector of state servants who can make its life difficult. Mr Key and his minister are not confrontational politicians. They are likely to accommodate teachers’ preferences where possible.

John Key is not by nature a confrontational politician, indeed. He does like to get people to agree on what they can, and agree to disagree on other stuff.  But he may find that there is no middle ground with some of the teacher unions.

But a trial is not needed. Those typically take years to bear fruit. Voters have endorsed the idea of rigorous national standards at all levels and clear reporting to parents. Is that really so hard? Primary schools are testing pupils for their own purpose all the time. Now they will have to share the results with parents.

A trial would be a disaster. It would be worse than the bulk funding trials of the 1990s. The teacher unions would use the trials to bully and threaten schools to not take part and/or to declare they are a failure. There is absolutely no chance at all that at the end of any trial, the position of the teacher unions will have changed at all. It is a delaying tactic.

The battle with educational failure has just begun. The Government must not give it up now.

Such a fuss over what is a pretty minor requirement – simply to tell a parent in plain English if their child is above, at, below or significantly below the level of numeracy and literacy expected for someone of their age.

This is not some abstract battle. A huge number of kids reach secondary school unable to read, write or do maths. They invariably are the ones who drop out, who feature in the crime stats, who go onto welfare rather than into work. And by the time they are in secondary school it is too late.

Michael Laws writes:

And so into this surreal realm has been injected the future discipline of national standards. An idea so sensible and overdue that one wonders what took so long. The logic is self evident. Except, it appears, to the teaching profession.

In steeling themselves against such external discipline, teacher unions – and their membership – have made themselves utterly risible. They are opposed to defining standards of age-group achievement, opposed to parents knowing their children’s level of competence against those standards, and opposed to schools providing such information to the Ministry of Education.

Basically sums it up. Worth reminding people that Labour is also opposed to parents knowing how their kids are doing against standards.

Why? Because they are scared witless by the concept of accountability. That a national tool might soon exist that identifies under-performing schools, under-performing teachers and under-performing kids.

The Government does want to know which kids are not meeting the standards. Not to punish the kids, or the schools, but quite the opposite. They want to then deliver extra funding to those kids and schools to maximise the chances of bringing the kids up to the desired standard before it is too late, and they become one of the many who leave school unable to read, write or count.

There is another subterranean theme running through the union dissent. That not all their membership is opposed. Many teachers see national standards as their chance to shine. They perceive them as an opportunity to test their imprint upon their charges. To establish a baseline for the norm of achievement for their age and socio-economic charges, and then beat it.

Better still, to be able to communicate the truth to the individual parent without having to find distracting commentary. And confirm bad teachers in their midst.

Little wonder that the School Trustees Association has thrown its public support behind Education Minister Anne Tolley, and dismissed the objections of teacher unions as illogical. The opportunity to be open, honest and transparent around what a child knows and what they do not, has the capacity to revolutionise teaching standards.

It is only the Luddites who are opposed. They, rightly, fear change. Because it will require them to justify their existence and their methods. And that is no bad thing.

Some people welcome accountability, and some fear it.