Greg’s Blog – principal (le?) learning

I have been spending this evening searching for information and opinions on national testing and league tables.

From ACT in Australia:

Public comparison of school results does not deliver better information for parents or better
public accountability to the taxpayer. It produces misleading and inaccurate information. It
does not lead to better schools for all. It produces social segregation. It favours privilege and
compounds the effects of disadvantage.
League tables of school literacy and numeracy outcomes give misleading and inaccurate
information about the quality of education because they do not measure the ‘value added’ by
the school. School test results are influenced by a variety of factors, not all of which are within
the control of schools or teachers. League tables do not distinguish the school contribution to
the test results from that of other factors such as family background and resources.
Socio-economic background is a major influence on education outcomes. High league table
results may reflect more the privileged family background and resources of the community
served by the school than the quality of teaching and the education program. As a result, league
tables can camouflage underachievement among mediocre schools with favoured intakes. On
the other hand, a school could perform badly in comparison with other schools despite high
quality teaching and resources because it serves a less-privileged community.
Comparisons of school results also lead to inaccurate assessments of school quality because the
tests are narrowly based. They do not assess the full range of schooling objectives. For
example, they ignore the social and personal development dimensions of schooling which are
just as important as the formal academic. Even in academic terms, the subject range and the
year cohorts assessed is limited. In other words, league tables do not give a complete picture of
the work of schools.

From an English ‘expert’:

“In England, a market approach to schools has created a bewildering hierarchy of institutions, from the elite private schools for the most powerful and advantaged families to the ‘bog standard’ comprehensive for the most disadvantaged and least powerful,” Professor Mortimore said in Sydney yesterday. “Is this what Australia needs?”

Peter Mortimore.

What the media do with the information:

If you are planning to live in Manchester and have children, the standard of schools in the area is important.
To that end, we have studied the most recent league tables (published in December 2006) to make a shortlist of the ten best and worst primary and secondary schools in Manchester.

Or from NY City:

Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) outcome in 2005-2006 for All Students: NO
AYP outcome for Black or African American: YES
AYP outcome for White: NO
AYP outcome for Economically Disadvantaged: NO
AYP outcome for Hispanic or Latino: NO

As the first quote says … it is all a test of community and has precious little to do with value added or quality of education in the broadest sense. Helpful – no more than saying schools with blue gates or principals who wear ties do better than those who don’t.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 2nd, 2009 at 7:51 pm and is filed under opinion, political.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.