Teacher unions fear assessment data being released because they worry about league tables published by media. And look I agree a league table which takes account of no control factors is not very helpful.

But what has excited me about the data being released, is what some real data experts can do with it (talking of data experts the Herald editorial moaned about ” A high priesthood of data analysis bemoans news media interest” which has caused me to label Keith Ng as Cardinal Keith!). An example is Luis Apiolaza at Quantum Forest. First he did the standard average proportion of students meeting the reading standard at each decile.

So you look at that, and think wow it is all about decile. But he then looks at the variance in each decile, not just the average.

The box shows the middle 50% for each decile, and the line in 1.5 times that interquartle range. What this shows is that the lower decile schools may have a lower average, they have much more variability. This is good, because it dispels some of the myth that all low decile schools have few students meet the national standard.

What I think this data may allow, is to then look at that huge variance in decile 1 to 3 schools, and identify the factors that have some schools higher than others. Eric Crampton has tweeted he has started some analysis and ethnicity is a big factor.

Of course this is all just a snapshot of data, and the lack of moderation means you take care with it (but does not make the data useless by any means). Th real value will be over time, as we get trend information.

I suspect there is going to be lot of sites doing their own analysis of the data.

The Herald reports:

The boss of New Zealand’s investment watchdog says he doesn’t like “low-ball” share offers but won’t be telling the Government to ban them because that would be going too far.

Several top executives including Vector chairman Michael Stiassny and Tower managing director Rob Flannagan have said the offers should be stopped after shareholders received offers to buy shares at a significant discount to what they trade at on the sharemarket.

But Sean Hughes, chief executive of the Financial Markets Authority, said there had to be some element of buyer beware.

“We can’t stand over shareholders and say ‘don’t sell’. It’s not the place of the regulator. That would be giving investment advice.”

Absolutely. If you are so stupid you accept an offer for well below what you can get on the NZX, you’re probably too stupid to be buying shares in the first place.

The rules should ensure offers are not deceptive etc. But going beyond that to ban low ball offers would be wrong.

The Herald reports:

The majority of people polled think schools should publicly release their national standards performance data.

Results from a Herald-Digipoll survey showed 60.3 per cent of people agreed that schools should be forced to release the information.

The survey showed that people aged 18-39 years old were overwhelmingly supportive of the idea, with 70.4 per cent wanting data released.

While the last time I looked Labour’s policy was to amend the Official Information Act so educational data is suppressed and not made publicly accessible.

Stuff reports:

It’s the baggage with bite – a crocodile on the loose in the cargo hold of a Qantas aircraft.

Qantas has confirmed a crocodile escaped from its cage during a flight between Brisbane and Melbourne.

Although the jaws of a crocodile could have been a nasty find for the baggage handler who discovered it was on the loose, the reptile was safely re-captured without drama.

This could be the sequel to Snakes on a Plane.

I was about to blog my theory that the GCSB was monitoring the communications of the Finns involved with Megaupload, and failed to throw away any communications involving Dotcom. Then I read in stuff, that is pretty much what happened:

The Kim Dotcom extradition case could collapse after government spies were found to have illegally bugged the Megaupload millionaire.

The Government Communications Security Bureau unlawfully snooped on Dotcom and co-accused Bram van der Kolk, it emerged yesterday.

Prime Minister John Key said he was “quite shocked” by the revelation and has ordered a probe by an independent watchdog. But he has refused to take responsibility for what he said was “a mistake, an error”.

It appears the blunder occurred because security services were unaware German Dotcom and his co-accused were New Zealand residents. The GCSB is only permitted to monitor foreign intelligence.

Labour and NZ First have been trying to score petty points over this with John Key. If Shearer or Peters could point to an actual single thing that they think John Key did wrong, or that they would have dine differently, then they may have some credibility. The simple fact of the matter is the moment Key was informed, he ordered a full inquiry.

Peters and Shearer have been claiming that Key must have signed an interception warrant, and hence must have known of Kim Dotcom before he claims he did.  This just shows their woeful understanding of the GCSB Act 2003. What is alarming about this, is they are both current or former members of the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament. Key has confirmed he was not asked to sign an interception warrant or briefed o the operation in advance.

It throws into question the attempt to extradite Dotcom to the United States on anti-piracy charges.

Yes, and no. The extradition is primarily on the evidence compiled by US authorities. However any evidence which was based on unlawful GCSB intercepts will not be allowed in court. It is unknown at this stage, what this is.

Dotcom responded to the revelations by tweeting: “I’m now a real life James Bond villain in a real life political copyright thriller scripted by Hollywood and the White House.” He called the GCSB “the NZ equivalent of the CIA”.

I responded, pointing out that they are in fact more the NZ equivalent of the NSA. The CIA equivalent is more the SIS.

This four minute clip is actually an ad for Bridget Mary McCormack, sister of Mary McCormack who played Kate Harper on the West Wing. She’s standing for the Michigan Supreme Court.

PM John Key has announced:

Prime Minister John Key today announced he has requested an inquiry by the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security into the circumstances of unlawful interception of communications of certain individuals by the Government Communications Security Bureau.

Mr Key says the Crown has filed a memorandum in the High Court in the Megauploadcase advising the Court and affected parties that the GCSB had acted unlawfully while assisting the Police to locate certain individuals subject to arrest warrants issued in the case. The Bureau had acquired communications in some instances without statutory authority.

After being informed about the matter by the Director of the GCSB on September 17, the Prime Minister referred the Bureau’s actions to the Inspector-General, Hon Paul Neazor. The Inspector-General is an independent statutory officer with the power to enquire into any matter related to a government intelligence agency’s compliance with the law.

Mr Key says he has also asked the Inspector-General to recommend any measures he considered necessary to prevent the issue from happening again.

Mr Key expressed his disappointment that unlawful acts had taken place.

“I expect our intelligence agencies to operate always within the law. Their operations depend on public trust.

“I look forward to the Inspector-General’s inquiry getting to the heart of what took place and what can be done about it,” says Mr Key. “Because this is also a matter for the High Court in its consideration of the Megaupload litigation, I am unable to comment further.”

There have been so many stuff ups by law enforcement in this case, that once the court action is concluded it could be worth having a wider inquiry into the entire way NZ authorities deal with extradition cases such as this.

It’s good there is no attempt to hide what happened, and that there will be a formal inquiry into what the GCSB did, and who was responsible for authoring actions that they did not have authority for.

Isaac Davidson reports:

The Conservative Party has refused to say whether it will compete for Act leader John Banks’ Epsom seat.

After its first annual conference at the weekend, the party said it was focused on reaching the 5 per cent party vote threshold.

Leader Colin Craig believes the party has already won votes from disillusioned Act supporters and that its fiscal and moral conservatism will appeal to the Epsom electorate.

“I think Epsom is quite a morally conservative electorate,” he said yesterday. “If you look at the ethnic breakdown of Epsom, particularly the Asian community … they are very strong on family, they are very strong on business, and on law and order. They are a good fit for Conservative.”

Actually I would say Epsom is more liberal than other electorates such as Tamaki.

My belief is that Paul Goldsmith will become MP for Epsom at the next election, so long as his name is on the ballot paper. I don’t think Epsom wants to become the tactical voting capital of NZ.

If I was advising the Conservatives, I’d tell them to look for a seat where it is likely a National MP will retire in 2014. Their chances are best there.

A reader pointed out this 2007 press release:

National Party Leader John Key says he is shocked and appalled that senior Labour Minister Steve Maharey has described a plan to feed children in our poorest schools as ‘Tory charity’.

“Labour’s more interested in petty patch protection and name calling than it is in getting food into the stomachs of hungry children.

“Labour has already clearly demonstrated how out of touch it is with this issue. Experts have been quoting a range of numbers that show thousands upon thousands of kids are turning up to school hungry.

“So, in the face of the overwhelming evidence, Mr Maharey has finally said he would welcome business contact with schools keen to adopt National’s Food In Schools programme.

“Yet this is a Minister, who less than 24 hours earlier, insultingly accused businesses behind the programme as being part of ‘Tory charity’. Both he and Helen Clark had earlier claimed there was no need and no demand.

“National understands the severity of the problem, and I’m not pretending this is the magic bullet to our social problems, but it is a positive first step.

A useful reminder that National started the food in schools programme, against opposition from Labour.

Beck Eleven at The Press wrote:

Few people embrace change. That’s just science. Nonetheless, it is inevitable, especially in this post-quake era. However, I find it incomprehensible how Education Minister Hekia Parata, ably assisted by Bulldozer No 1, Gerry Brownlee, could possibly have thought the way they announced changes to Christchurch’s schools would go down well.

You would hope that hundreds of hours of research had gone into how many schools needed to close, the criteria for each and rock solid, defensible reasons for the changes. Then, one would expect a few more hours nutting out the best delivery method.

There are screeds of literature and academic theory dedicated to the psychology of change, so why on God’s Rubbled Earth would the news be delivered to principals who were given coloured name badges before being told if the colour of their name badge equated to a closure, a merger or status quo. I can’t even bear to give the Government’s term “rejuvenation” any more air.

It sounds like a terrible and humiliating rip-off version of New Zealand Idol or New Zealand’s Got Talent.

While I admit it would take some extraordinary being to deliver the news in a way that would be acceptable to the majority, surely someone suspected this would be the thorn that turned Christchurch into a wounded lion?

They gave out colour named badges to principals, and then announced whether their colour meant their school survived or not????

How on earth could anyone think that was a good idea? Jesus Christ. Someone actually sat down and said “Hey let’s give them different coloured name badges, to indicate what happens to their schools” and no-one else said “That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said!”.

I’m staggered by that degree of insensitivity and stupidity. Now I know Ministers do not get into the details of whether or not people get coloured name tags, so I don’t blame them. But they need to ensure either their Departments have a CEO and managers who know how to handle issues like this, or insist that such details get run through their office.

With reflection, almost everything about the announcement was flawed. Having one “big bang” announcement was the wrong way to do it. Summoning all the principals and board chairs together may have been convenient, but made things worse.

As Beck Eleven has said, any change is difficult and challenging. School closures or mergers are some of the most difficult. We’re talking the jobs of principals and teachers. The security of neighbourhood for parents, the incredibly important friendships for pupils. If any reorganisation needs maximum sensitivity, then school closures and mergers are it.

If I was the relevant manager in the Ministry of Education, what I would have done is:

1. Appoint a dedicated liaison for every school that could be impacted
2. Have them go in and meet key stakeholders in each school
3. Keep the school informed on what is happening on a “no surprises” policy
4. Share with them the data on which a decision will be made. Ask them for input and data.
5. Telegraph well in advance what the likely scenarios are. If closure is likely, be honest and say “That is the likely outcome, but the decision is not final”
6. When there is a draft decision, have someone go to the school, and in order tell the principal, board, and staff. Don’t summon them to come out to you.
7. Have support services available to those affected.

You’re still going to have upset staff, parents and pupils due to the nature of the decisions. But you won’t have got the same degree of anger and pushback, as has occurred.

I think we often try to comfort ourselves that the “extreme” faction of Islam is just a few thousand uneducated poor and/or jobless Muslims. But the sad reality is that the extreme faction has wide-spread support from leaders down. They are definitely still a minority, and rejected by most Muslims, but they are not a trivial number.

We see this, in this story on NZ Herald:

A Pakistani official on Saturday placed a US$100,000 bounty on the head of the maker of an anti-Islam film that has sparked a wave of violence and anger, as Muslims mounted fresh protests worldwide.

Railways Minister Ghulam Ahmed Bilour also called on the Taliban and Al-Qaeda to join the hunt and help accomplish the “noble deed.”

Bilour spoke to reporters in the northwestern city of Peshawar a day after violent nationwide demonstrations against the “Innocence of Muslims” film left 21 people dead and more than 200 injured.

“I announce today that this blasphemer who has abused the holy prophet, if somebody will kill him, I will give that person a prize of $100,000,” Bilour said, urging others to shower the killer with cash and gold.

“I also invite Taliban and Al-Qaeda brothers to be partners in this noble deed,” he added. “I also announce that if the government hands this person over to me, my heart says I will finish him with my own hands and then they can hang me.”

Even worse, neither his Government nor his party are taking any action against him. They are saying that his statement are personal views, not Government policy, so no need to do anything!

I think we are understanding how Osama managed to live in Pakistan for so long, undetected.

Stuff reports Professor John Hattie’s 10 indicators for parents:

1. In the playground, do the students look each other in the eye? Or do they avoid each other, or sit in cliques.

2. Diversity breeds fresh thinking. Can they show you genuine evidence it is encouraged?

3. How do they measure success? By the achievements of the few or of the many?

4. Ask to meet the best teacher. If they tell you they’re all good, they’re not thinking clearly.

5. Who do students turn to? Every student should have someone who knows how they are doing and will spend time with them.

6. Do new students make friends in the first month? It is a critical indicator for success: how does the school make sure it happens with all students?

7. Do they like mistakes? Learning starts from not knowing, so do they embrace that? Do students feel confident enough to talk about errors or not knowing something?

8. Are students “assessment capable” in this school. Can they talk about how well they are doing, where they are now and going next?

9. Do they use acceleration for all? Are students enabled to learn at different speeds?

10. What feedback do students get? Ask – “what did you get told about your work today”?

I especially like the suggestion to look at the playground and asking to meet the best teacher.

This is Rodney Hide at his best as he destroys the myths around “child poverty” which brings up images of kids starving in New Zealand. Rodney says in the HoS:

“Child poverty’s terrible! Kids hungry! It’s getting worse!

“270,000 poor kids. And government? Doing nothing!”

But hang on. All kids are poor. Children typically don’t own much beyond a few toys. That’s true in poor families. And it’s true of rich families.

Children must rely totally on parents and caregivers. On their own, they’re destitute.

And yet we have a report boldly titled Child Poverty. That tugs at the heartstrings and makes great newspaper copy but it’s wrong. The report should properly be titled family or household poverty.

So the “child” part of the term “child poverty” is misleading.

But even that’s misleading. The 270,000 “child poverty” figure refers to relative poverty. Your children suffer in “poverty” if your household’s net income is less than 60 per cent of your equivalent household’s median income. The cut-off income for a couple with four children is just over $1000 a week. Net.

It’s no wonder that one child in four lives in “poverty” – $1000 a week in the hand is well above any lack of comfort let alone starvation. But for the experts, that’s “poverty”.

Raising for kids on $52,000 (net) a year would be tough and challenging. But probably not what most people think of poverty. It is also reflecting that on top of that $52,000 net a year, the family will be getting tens of thousands of dollars in “free” education and healthcare for their kids.

A windfall that doubled all incomes wouldn’t budge the child “poverty” figure. There would still be 270,000 poverty-stricken children. That’s because experts define “poverty” in reference to the middle income.

Making people richer doesn’t fix relative poverty. The only fix is to narrow the spread of income, even if that makes everyone poorer. That’s why experts recommend taking even more income from families above the median income to give to those below it. The fix follows directly from defining “child poverty” as household inequality.

This is key. By the way the poverty industry has defined poverty, the only “solution” is to tax people more and hand out more welfare. It is a front for the classic socialist agenda.

If we had a great depression which saw the top 50% of families suffer a 20% drop in income, and the bottom 50% suffer a 10% drop in income – the poverty industry would claim that fewer families are now in poverty! Seriously.

In these times of huge global economic uncertainty, the focus needs to be on economic growth, not increasing tax and welfare.

News reports now link the poverty report to children turning up to school hungry. But even the gloomiest estimates don’t have 270,000 hungry kids.

Labour leader David Shearer quoted a 2002 Ministry of Health survey to say 83,000 children aged 5 to 14 “sometimes or often went to school without breakfast”. That’s well short of the 270,000 “living in poverty”.

But even the 83,000 figure is exaggerated. The survey found the equivalent of 83,000 kids in the previous week “not” or “sometimes not” eating or drinking at home before school but 76,000 “usually” or “sometimes” eating or drinking on the way to school. Presumably, they are many of the kids who didn’t eat at home.

Data we have not seen in other media reports.

The survey found that the older the child the more likely they were not to eat at home and the more likely they were to eat on the way to school. Also, girls were more than twice as likely as boys not to eat at home. The sex and age differences suggest forces other than poverty at work.

Further, although children from poorer households were more likely not to eat at home before school, they were also more likely to drink Coke and eat chips and be fatter.

Poverty can’t be the cause. A bowl of porridge costs 10 cents. The most nutritious food on the planet is liver. It costs 70c a serve. The second most nutritious is an egg: 50c.

I have nourishing bone broth for lunch. The marrow bones for a good brew cost $10. That’s 50c a meal. Good nutritious food doesn’t cost much. It certainly doesn’t cost much compared to a Coke, a bag of chips or a burger.

The lack of breakfast is not caused by a lack of money. It’s caused by a lack of care. That lack of care can’t be fixed by giving parents more money. Handing parents more money doesn’t make them care more.

Porridge is meant to be one of the best breakfasts you can give your kid.

The Herald on Sunday reports:

Primary schools have disclosed controversial data about pupil achievement, with the surprise revelation that children in bigger classes and bigger schools get better grades.

The Herald on Sunday has conducted a comprehensive survey of schools’ national standards results, before the Ministry of Education publishes them this week.

At schools with fewer pupils for each teacher, around 70 per cent of children are achieving national standards in reading, writing and arithmetic. But at schools with more pupils for each teacher – in effect, bigger classes – the pass rates rise to about 80 per cent.

What would be interesting is to have the results broken down by decile and size. As low decile schools get more funding, they may have a smaller class size. That is only if they spend it on more teachers and not operational costs.

But regardless it backs my view that the impact of smaller class sizes is minimal, unless it is a massive difference. In other words a size of 15 will make a big difference compared to 30, but a class of 25 compared to a class of 27 will not.

It would have been nice of the HoS has told us their definitions of smaller and larger class sizes, so the calculation can be checked. There isn’t enough info in the story to verify it.

Gallup has released the latest of its annual polls measuring trust or distrust in the US media by Americans.

A record high 60% say they have not very much trust or no trust at all in the media to report the news fully, accurately and fairly.  This has declined 14% over the last decade.

What is interesting is the breakdown by affiliation. 58% of Democrats say they have a fair or great deal of trust in the media and only 26% of Republicans say the same. Now some may say that this is because Republicans are detached from reality, but they also found that Independents have only 31% trust in the media. What this suggests to me is that the majority of the media are seen as Democrat-aligned and too sycophantic to the Democrats – hence the rest of America has little faith in them.

Watch this guy pay his fine of $137 with 137 one dollar bills folded into the shape of pigs, and put into a donut box. It took him around four hours to do it!

First the criticism by the NZEI:

So, what will National Standards league tables actually tell you?  Not much.  In fact, they will be very misleading if you are using them to judge school effectiveness.

They won’t tell you the level of improvement of children at a school, nor how engaged or happy individual children are, whether the school is meeting the individual children’s needs and whether the teachers are inspiring them.

Actually they will, eventually. Sure the first year is static data, but what I will find fascinating is the change over time. As for the other stuff, yes national standards data is only one piece of data. The answer is to supply more data, not less.

John Hartevelt who was the project manager for the project responds:

Many people told us not to publish the information you see on this site.

They fought to stop us. Some sent us bills for the privilege of their school’s data. Others buried the figures we asked for in complex matrices and pages of indecipherable bumph.

Well done on Fairfax for persevering.

Anyone who read the National Standards results as a proxy for quality would be quite foolish. We wouldn’t do that and we don’t suggest you do, either. For starters, they are not moderated, so one school’s “well below” may be another’s “at” or “above”. There is just no way of knowing – yet – exactly how the standards have been applied across schools.

But even if they were moderated, the standards alone could not tell you everything about how a school is doing by its pupils. As many of the experts we canvassed for this project have noted, quality is most evident in what a school does to push its pupils up, not in how well they do at attracting the brainiest, most-privileged kids in the first place.

Absolutely.

Our data handling processes have been checked by independent experts. Every school page includes decile, roll and funding statistics and a link to the school’s latest Education Review Office report. We have reported in detail across the country on a range of schools to help show that there is more to any of them than the numbers you see on this site. And we have commissioned a range of views on National Standards to debate the issue in their own words.

The link to the ERO reports is useful.

My old school is Island Bay School. I lived near St Francis De Sales and the local Intermediate was South Wellington.

Island Bay is decile 10 (which surprises me), St Francis decile 9 South Wellington decile 7. A comparison of the three is here. A very easy to comprehend format.

NZ Herald reports:

Current and former students have thrown their support in behind a Northland Catholic school teacher who was fired after he supported a gay rights protest.

Nigel Studdart was dismissed from Pompallier Catholic College in Whangarei on Tuesday evening after a four-hour meeting with the school’s Board of Trustees.

Last month the school’s principal Richard Stanton wrote comments in the school newsletter opposing The Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill, which passed its first reading in Parliament.

Mr Studdart was then suspended for supporting a protest at the school which involved students wearing rainbow ribbons or armbands to show their support for gay marriage.

I think the principal was unwise to write comments on a non-educational issue on the school newsletter. And good on the students for expressing their views via a protest.

But Mr Studdart was wrong to join and support that protest. He is a teacher, employed by the Principal. He could have told the principal directly he thought his column was wrong. He could have lobbied colleagues to support him. He could have written to the Board.

But you can’t have a teacher take part in a protest action against the principal. Few schools would allow it.

It is a huge shame, what has happened. It is clear Nigel Studdart was a popular and effective teacher, who cares deeply for his students. Hopefully he will be employed elsewhere. But he did make a serious error of judgement in supporting a student protest against the principal.

John Roughan writes:

Do you know how they chose which schools to close in Christchurch? I don’t. I could find out butI shouldn’t have to, there has been so much television coverage of the subject this week we should be well informed.

I have seen sad, angry and bitter teachers. I have been told over and over what a blow this is for people who are still trying to recover from earthquakes, particularly when their school suffered little damage.

I have seen school children lined up for the cameras and saying the same things, exactly the same, as the sad, angry and bitter teachers. I have seen the kids with placards made in class and I’ve seen them having a protest march.

Has anybody explained to them how and why their school is on the list, or are they simply learning this is what you do when you don’t like a decision? That strikes me as a good reason to close the school but doubtless there were other criteria.

I have listened to John Campbell, thinking he would want to know what they are, but if he knows he doesn’t seem to think his audience needs to know.

I watched his reporter cover a school protest meeting the other night, jumping excitedly from one sad, angry, bitter teacher to the next and then to one well-primed child after another, and Campbell thanked him for that report.

Maybe I missed an interview where an education official got a chance to explain the reasons but I would have thought the rationale, whatever it is, would be mentioned in every report.

Journalists are trained to cover all obvious questions. When one is left begging like this, be very suspicious.

One can only agree – no balance at all. No attempt to explain, just to elicit an emotional response.

This is a significant move by the United States.  Claire Trevett reports:

In a key shift, the United States is lifting a ban on New Zealand navy vessels visiting US ports, and will remove obstacles to defence talks and exercises.

US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced the shifts in policy after talks with Defence Minister Jonathan Coleman in Auckland today.

Mr Panetta said the restrictions would be lifted in the interests of closer defence cooperation in the Asia Pacific.

Neither side will change their stance on US ship visits to New Zealand, but Mr Panetta said the restrictions had been in place since the suspension of Anzus. He believed removing them could be made without affecting core tenets of US policy.

Currently waivers are required before New Zealand can take part in exercises or talks with the US.

Mr Panetta said the changes signified a “new era” in the relationship.

The ban had become somewhat farcical considering  that NZ and US troops were serving together in Afghanistan and the like. The silliness which saw the NZ ship have to park down the road from Pearl Harbour, while Japanese ships could dock, illustrated this.

Mr Panetta said he expected to see a New Zealand Navy vessel in a US port soon but it was up to New Zealand when that happened.

“While we acknowledge our countries continue to have differences of opinion in limited areas, today we have acknowledged we are embarking on a new course in our relationship that will not let those differences stand in the way of greater engagement on security issues.”

I expect we will see a NZ ship in a US port, and then a US ship in a NZ port. The vast majority of the US fleet has neither nuclear arms nor power.