Disclaimer: - me talking, not my employers or blog host
With the election coming up soon the crusade for our votes has well and truly begun. For those of us in education and who are parents we have a vested interest in being aware of what the political parties are proposing.
This excerpt from a recent email from National (unsolicited to me at school) is interesting clarification for me of their policy:
There are 10 first steps that National will take as part of its Literacy and Numeracy package. National will:
1. Set National Standards in literacy and numeracy.
2. Require every primary and intermediate school pupil to be assessed regularly against National Standards.
3. Require primary and intermediate schools to report to parents in plain English about how their child is doing compared to National Standards and compared to other children their age.
So National Testing is part of their platform… The logical extension of National Testing is league tables of the results. Any national test is far more a test of community than some sort of assurance of educational quality. (This apart from the fact we already have NEMP, PAT’s, ARB’s, ASTTle, already… so what more do we need? What schools use none of these tools?) Newspapers already collate the publicly available information of NCEA results, property funding, roll trends, etc NOW … It is naive to assume anything but league tables will come from National Testing. Jeremy Clarkson puts it much more eloquently than me:
We now have bloody league tables, a handy cut out ’n’ keep guide to how well the school performs. Well, forgive the expletive, but that’s bollocks.
Printing a list of “best schools” purely on the grounds of academic achievement is as idiotic as printing a list of “best foods” purely on the grounds of calorie content. It tells you nothing.
A couple of years ago a sixth-form student I know wanted to study for a science A-level so she could pursue a noble career in engineering. The school campaigned vigorously for her to do something useless instead, like media studies or knitting. But she and her parents were adamant.
So she sat the science A-level and got a D. And because of that single failure the school fell 50 places in the league tables. One child. One exam result. And a 50-place fall. Still think league tables make sense?
I think not!
The USA has the No Child Left Behind Act, England has state sponsored league tables. And teachers in both countries are decrying the negative impact these policies have had on the educational purpose and outcomes of their systems. In some parts of the States the whole school staff get fired if results don’t improve ‘enough’ each year.
I have real concerns about the impact on the introduction on the revised NZC of National Testing. The imperative to do well in the educational competition may very well be greater than the one to design and implement a child centred and focused local curriculum … and that, I believe, would be very sad for both our profession and our children.
From the “told you so” file …. I have it on very good authority that the MoE have indicated they will challenge in court to get access to e-AsTTle data. Particularly with a change in government this is a real concern (or at least I believe should be!) for us all. League tables anyone?
What does this mean for AsTTle though? After such a big investment it is still a bit of a monolith …. time consuming and sometimes difficult to administer. Papaer based. Multi choice … how useful will it be in the future? Watch this space I suppose …
and this comment was left by an 8th grader on the original on youtube:
I agree, I am an 8th grader in the US and are school really needs to kick up the tech program, all we do with computers is use them for typing reports. I cant even take a tech class, or get into a tech club because there are none available. So thank you for the video and I hope this changes the mindset of some schools.
Do take the time to read the comments at the bottom of this post - just about as interesting!
Last week in his post, Dr. McLeod shared information about less-than-stellar candidates who enter the colleges of education and eventually the ranks of teachers. If Entrance Exams are to be held credible, and if the statistics are to be believed, then we have a situation of weaker candidates entering teacher preparation programs and the most capable teachers leaving the classroom after only a couple of years. These trends will clearly have an impact on student outcomes. If this trend continues, Dr. McLeod poses the question, “Now what?”
I would begin my answer with a rhetorical question: “Who ultimately controls the quality of the teaching that occurs on our campuses each day?”
If you do not agree that it is the Principal, quit reading now.
If the Principal is properly fulfilling their primary responsibilities of supervision and leader of instruction, then anything less than exemplary teaching is their fault. Forget the consultants, the department heads, the personnel office, or even the superintendent. The ONE person who should KNOW what is happening day-in and day-out on the campus is the principal. And if a teacher doesn’t know their subject, isn’t planning effectively, can’t maintain discipline, and doesn’t relate to kids…in short, they just cannot teach, the principal should know it and should get rid of that teacher.
Maybe I cannot control many of the factors which cause weaker candidates to apply for entry into college education programs. And maybe I cannot prevent the best from leaving for better pay elsewhere. But I can control the quality of applicant I will interview and the quality of teaching I will allow to remain on my campus.
Without apologies, I will maintain that if a school has less than effective teaching, it has a less than effective principal. And if the less than effective principal is allowed to stay, then the district has a less than effective superintendent. Read the blogs. Read the ASCD publications. Read the literature out there. There is nothing new. We KNOW what we should be doing.
Whether it is firing teachers, assigning them to areas where their strengths can best be applied, hiring alternatively certified staff, or watching the data to insure that each teacher is a value added to the process…The biggest problem we face in education today…the single largest obstacle to improving the quality of teaching is that we have way too many principals who - for whatever reason - are frozen in their tracks.
That’s right…I said it…We have way too many principals who talk the talk, can quote the research, can write erudite blogs, but who can’t lead a group of teachers in a straight line down a hallway. Maybe I’m just tired and worn a little thin here at the end of the year. But I’m tired of hearing my colleagues gnash their teeth, whine, and complain about issues which are screaming for action - and all of which are under their control.
As a principal, I am the first to admit that maybe the best thing I can do sometimes is to shut up and take action.
Stop making excuses. If you have bad teachers, get rid of them. Quit taking the path of least resistance. Grow some thick skin and a backbone and start documenting your weak staff. Have courageous conversations with you mediocre teachers.
One of the greatest ad slogans of all time truly applies here:
Just Do It!
Quite a challenge here….. this blog is written by school administrators in the ‘States. One I will be adding to my Bloglines based on this post!
Young people who consistently participate in comprehensive, sequential, and rigorous arts programs are:
- 4 times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement
- 3 times more likely to be elected to class office within their schools
- 4 times more likely to participate in a math and science fair
- 3 times more likely to win an award for school attendance
- 4 times more likely to win an award for writing an essay or poem.
Source: Americans for the Arts (www.artsusa.org).
The arts provide children with:
- different ways to process information and express their knowledge
- the ability to think creatively in areas like math and science
- the ability to be independent and collaboration skills
(source: Young Audiences, Inc. www.youngaudiences.org)
The arts also:
- teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships.
- celebrate multiple perspectives - showing students that there are many ways to see and interpret the world
- make it clear that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.
- help children learn to say what cannot be said. They must learn to reach into their poetic capacities to find the words to describe how the work of art makes them feel.
(source: National Art Education Association website - www.naea-reston.org/tenlessons.html From Elliot Eisner’s book: The Arts and the Creation of Mind)
Time to look/listen to the Ken Robinson TEDTalks video again …..??
There has been a buzz over the last few days about NY city education Dept banning employees from puting blog urls (etc) in their email footers. Lisa Nielson who is the professional development manager for educational technology at the NYC Department of Education seems to have prompted the ban. Ha …. now theres an irony. Her blog is interesting reading! Take the time to have a browse….
The recent entry on digital footprints and being responsible is very good! Good points for all educators to ponder…
Five ideas to enable educators to develop and model a purposeful and professional digital footprint.
1-Model responsible footprinting with your own practices in blogging, commenting, social networking, and picture posting.
2-If you have established a professional blog, share it widely and proudly such as placing it in your email signature (if your employer will let you) and as Jeff Utecht suggests include your blog url when you comment on others blogs and in other forums. This enables others to see best practices and is a great way to get the conversation started.
3-Google yourself (aka ego surfing). If you have something posted online that you’d be uncomfortable having a current or future student, parent, colleague, or employer find, delete it (if you can) or request that it be deleted. There are ways an aggressive internet detective can still find this information, but most won’t go through the trouble and the mere fact that you deleted it shows some level of responsibility.
4-If you do have online personal information and/or interests you wouldn’t want discovered, use an unidentifiable screen name/avatar. This means you may need to update your screen name/avatar in your existing online presence.
5-Engage in the conversation and professionally comment, reply, and present online, onsite, and at conferences.
Hopefully these ideas are helpful for some readers and I’d love to know others experiences with negative or positive repercussions from digital footprints. If this topic is of interest click the following links from a 20-something career expert who shares another perspective on why the lines between personal and professional lives should be blurred and why the whole idea of our lives being available for public display is actually pretty cool.
This is an amazing site that links a variety of micro-loan orgnisations from around the world in a website. You can choose specific projects to support as well as see information about the people and their lives, risk profiles etc. You can also invite others to contribute/participate in the site and projects - “social networking for good”!
I can see now that it will be tough to keep the Blue Skunk apolitical this year. I thought this observation by Texas library professor Mary Ann Bell on her Wanderings blog was rich:
…it occurred to me that the MAC vs PC preference discussion is somewhat analogous to today’s political conundrum. Is it just me or does Obama seem like a Mac and Hillary more like a PC? Playing around with this idea I came up with several reasons:
Obama:
* Very nicely packaged
* Stylish
* Engaging and appealing
* Easy to like
Hillary
* Businesslike
* Long history of getting things done
* Practical
* Hardworking
McCain? There my analogy breaks down. I am not sure what to compare him to!
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