Archives for category: International
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

David C. Berliner on the Latest International Test Scores: It’s Poverty, Not Common Core, That Matters

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2017 //
15

A few days ago, I wrote a post speculating about whether Common Core had caused the decline in forth grade reading scores on the latest international test.

David C. Berliner, one of our nation’s most distinguished social scientists, wrote to say that Common Core is not the culprit; demographics is.

I stand corrected.

He writes:

It may be, as you posit, that the introduction of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) had its effects on our PIRLS scores. But before you or any others of us worry about our latest PIRLS scores, and the critics start the usual attacks on our public schools, remember this: Standardized Achievement Tests are quite responsive to demographics, and not very sensitive at all to what teachers and schools accomplish.

With that in mind, let’s ask first what the average score for the USA was in comparison to a few other nations that we often think of as high performing nations. On the paper and pencil version of PIRLS 2016 the USA achieved a score 549. (There was also an e-version of the test reported separately, but nothing in that analysis contradicts anything I say below) Singapore, however, scored 576, Hong Kong scored 569, and Finland scored 566. Clearly these other nations exhibited considerably higher scores than did the USA. Our public schools would seem to be doing something wrong. Perhaps it is related to the introduction of the CCSS. But since demographics are powerful influences on Standardized Achievement Test scores, let’s break down the US PIRLS scores by some of the demographic information that we have available to us.

First, we can note that Asian Americans scored 591. That is, our Asians beat the hell out of Asian Asians! Since the vast majority of Asian Americans go to public school it would appear that there isn’t much of anything wrong with the public schools they go to, nor can the curriculum in use in those schools be bad, even if it is the CCSS. And from Asian American achievement in literacy, we must acknowledge that the skills of their reading teachers appear to be more than adequate.

White kids in the USA, taken as a group, are generally wealthier than non-whites. How did white kids do on PIRLS? They scored 571, close to Singapore, and better than Hong Kong and Finland. Since white kids make up something like 50% of the public school population of the USA, we can say that about half of our school kids, about 25 million or so, are, on average, high performing students in the area of reading—whatever the method chosen to teach them.

How do kids in schools where there is little poverty do on PIRLS? The data tell us that in schools where there are fewer than 10 percent of the students on free and reduced lunch, students had a score of 587—handily beating Singapore, Hong Kong, and Finland. In fact, even higher average scores were found in in schools that cater to upper middle-class kids, schools where the poverty rate is between 10 and 24 percent. That very large group of American public school kids scored 592, handily exceeding the schools that serve even wealthier families, and easily beating the two Asian nations and Finland. Furthermore, there was also a group of kids from schools where 25 to 50 percent of the kids were considered to be in poverty because they were eligible for free and reduced lunch. These were schools that clearly do not cater to the very wealthy. Yet they scored 566, the same as Finland, a nation we always look up to and one with childhood poverty rates of about 4%.

So why did the USA, overall, look mediocre in score and rank on this test? I think it is for the same reason that we always look mediocre in score and rank on PISA! It’s our social and economic systems, not our schools, that cause lower scores than is desired by our nation.

Poor kids in general, but often Black and Hispanic kids in particular, do not grow up in the same kinds of stable families and secure neighborhoods that are more likely to nurture higher levels of school achievement. It’s not America’s schools that are a problem: its America’s social, economic, and housing policies that are our educational problem. While Singapore and Hong Kong both have disturbingly high poverty rates, compared to Finland, both are so small that poor and rich live in proximity to each other. Thus, there is a lot more mixing of children from different social classes and ethnicities than is true in the USA, where income determines housing and housing determines schooling. Here, schools that predominantly serve poor and minority kids, and schools that predominantly serve wealthier kids, are the rule, not that exception. It seems clear to me that those demographic realities are the predominant determinants of scores on Standardized Achievement Tests—be they domestic (NAEP, ACT, SATs) or international (PISA, PIRLS).

So, if we want better scores on such tests, we need to get off the backs of teachers and schools. Our teachers and schools are presently educating a high percentage of our kids to very high levels of literacy. But that is not true for another high percentage of our kids. What we need to help those kids is to exert a lot more influence on our nations politicians to give us the equitable society that will promote higher achievement for all our citizens.

David C. Berliner
Regents’ Professor Emeritus,
Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College,
Arizona State University,
Tempe, AZ 85287

Categories Equity, International, Testing

Did U.S. Performance on PISA Decline Because of Common Core?

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2017 //
28

Every time that international test scores are released, there is a predictable clamor to “do something.”

President Obama said that our ranking on an international test was “a Sputnik moment” and reason to push harder for the “remedies” in Race to the Top. We now know that Race to the Top was a failure that had no positive results. Schools were closed, teachers were fired, many new charter schools opened, and performance on the NAEP in 2015–five years after the launch of Race to the Top–went flat.

Now we have the results of the latest international test, the Progress in International Literacy Study (PIRLS), and the news for fourth graders in the U.S. was not good.

The United States tumbled in international rankings released Tuesday of reading skills among fourth-graders, raising warning flags about students’ ability to compete with international peers.

The decline was especially precipitous for the lowest-performing students, a finding that suggests widening disparities in the U.S. education system.

The United States has traditionally performed well on the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, an assessment given to fourth-graders in schools around the world every five years. In 2016, however, the average score in the United States dropped to 549 out of 1,000, compared to 556 in 2011. The country’s ranking fell from fifth in the world in 2011 to 13th, with 12 education systems outscoring the United States by statistically significant margins. Three other countries roughly tied with the United States; they scored higher, but the differences were not ­notable.

What happened?

The Common Core (aka Common Core State Standards) was introduced across the nation in 2010-2011. The students now in fourth grade were the first cohort to get Common Core, starting in kindergarten.

Their reading scores went down, and it appears that the children who were likeliest to see declines were the lowest performing students.

The Common Core standards were written hurriedly, funded entirely by one man (Bill Gates), and rushed into implementation without any field testing whatsoever. Gates not only paid the hundreds of millions of dollars to fund the writing of Common Core, but he spent many more millions (some have estimated as much as $2 billion) to persuade advocacy groups and education organizations to support the adoption and implementation of the standards.

Would the FDA approve a drug for national use without field testing?

Of course not.

Our children were guinea pigs, and the experiment failed.

Almost every state in the nation has adopted Common Core. Some have rebranded it, but it is still Common Core.

What will states do now?

One of the most prominent advocates for Common Core was Jeb Bush, who is close to Betsy DeVos. They loved Common Core, because they expected it would cause widespread failure and hasten support for the privatization of public schools.

DeVos reacted to the declining scores on PIRLS by advocating for more school choice, more charters and vouchers.

In 2012, Joel Klein and Condoleezza Rice wrote a report claiming that public schools were so awful that they endangered national security. Their recommendations: more charters, more vouchers, and Common Core.

Friends, we can’t let these nihilists destroy our democratic system of public education.

Schools improve when they have adequate funding, not competition. Schools improve when students live stable lives, with access to food, medicine, and decent living conditions. Schools improve when they are staffed with professional teachers, not temporary, untrained teachers.

Common Core has failed our nation and our students. So have the privatizers.

Since the passage and signing of No Child Left Behind on January 8, 2002, the U.S. has been on the wrong track.

Can the “reformers” please admit their errors and change their ways? Or are they determined to keep pushing the same failed strategies without regard to evidence?

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, International, Privatization, Testing

The Horror: Here Comes Baby PISA, Testing 5-Year-Olds

By dianeravitch
December 7, 2017 //
19

The testing monster is coming for our children.

Helge Wasmuth of Mercy College in New York writes here about the full-steam-ahead plan for international testing of five-year-Old children. As he reports, the planning has excluded experts on Early Childhood Education and has been shrouded in secrecy.

This is the latest and most disgusting manifestation of what Pasi Sahlberg dubbed GERM (the Global Education Reform Movement).

Wasmuth predicts that Baby PISA will lead to:

“increased standardization, high-stakes accountability, predetermined learning outcomes, control over teachers, business-based management models, and privatization.

“The goal of the study is to gather information on children’s cognitive and social-emotional skills as well as characteristics of their home and early education environments. Direct assessment, including actual samples of student work, will measure the domains of emerging literacy and numeracy, executive function, and empathy and trust. Children will be expected to do their work on a tablet, devoting approximately 15 minutes to each domain over a period of two days. Indirect assessment—parents’ and staff reports and administrator observations—will focus on cognitive and social-emotional skills. By participating in the study, OECD asserts, member nations will have access to the primary factors that drive or thwart early learning, developing a common framework and benchmarks.

“The study is now underway. A pilot that was originally planned, which would have provided a valuable opportunity for meaningful feedback and fine-tuning, has been scrapped. The organization has moved forward with data collection, to be conducted from the end of 2017 through 2019. This will be followed by so-called “quality control” and analysis, and the release of a report in 2020.

“While the original plan called for participation by three to six countries in the northern and southern hemispheres, a number of early childhood communities have already successfully registered protest, urging their governments to abstain. (Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Norway, New Zealand, Sweden, and Denmark are among them.) The only outliers are England—Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are not taking part—and the United States…

“Critique of the IELS has been fierce, and numerous concerns have been raised. Most egregious is the marginalization of the wider early childhood community. “The entire IELS project has been shrouded in secrecy from day one,” Mathias Urban, director of the Early Childhood Research Centre at the University of Roehampton in London, told me. Respected researchers and scholars in the field were not consulted, their input unwelcome. As has long been the case with early education policy, decades of research have been ignored.

“The OECD values objectivity, universality, predictability and that which can be measured. The organization seems to be oblivious to alternative ideas about educating and caring for young children. Nor have local contexts and traditions for this process been part of the conversation…

“So, why is all of this shrouded in secrecy? Why are we kept in the dark? Why are the experts and the field’s knowledge marginalized? One needs to ask: Who really benefits from such a study? The children? Will it really inform policymaking and improve educational practices in a meaningful way? Or is it another piece to open up public education sectors to corporate interests?

The disregard of the early childhood community is concerning enough. Don’t even get me started on the collection of child-based data on a global scale without the consent of children, parents, or practitioners. Or with assessing five-year-olds on a tablet. How flawed and meaningless are the results. How do you assess trust and empathy, or the complexities of learning and development?

“The impact on our field will be disastrous—maybe not immediately, but soon enough. OECD is a powerful and influential institution. Everyone should be clear about their goals of creating a common framework with benchmarks and assessing learning outcomes. Early childhood education will be reduced to what can be measured: literacy and numeracy.

“Ultimately, the field will fall even deeper into the clutches of GERM. Many countries will feel compelled to do well on the IELS, and the easiest way to do that is to align the curricula to what is measured. Pedagogical compliance will follow, along with teaching to the test—especially in countries, such as the U.S., with many private providers of early education, who will use their outcomes to win new customers. As in the case of the Common Core, a new market will be created, “Aligned to IELS” the new trademark.

“The quest for predictable outcomes leaves no place for the hallmarks of early childhood—for uncertainty, experimentation, surprise, amazement, context, subjective experiences. OECD values and measures what can be measured, but not necessarily what is important.”

Baby PISA opens a Pandora’s box. Out of it flies standardization, conformity, inappropriate pedagogy. Trapped in the box will Be Children, yearning to play.

Categories Childhood, Early Childhood Education, Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International

After 17 Years of “Reform,” International Test Scores Stagnant

By dianeravitch
December 6, 2017 //
50

In 2000, when George W. Bush ran for President, we heard about “the Texas Miracle.” We were told that testing every child every year would produce high test scores and close the achievement gaps. Believing in the claim, Congress passed No Child Left Behind, which required testing every child every year from grades 3-8.

Then came “Race to the Top,” which ratcheted up the testing punishments, requiring that teachers be evaluated by student test scores.

In 2011, the National Research Council warned that test-based accountability was not working and was unlikely ever to work.

Congress ignored its report. In 2015, Congress passed the Every Student Succeeds Act, continuing the practice of annual testing, a practice not known in other nations.

What has 17 years of high-stakes testing produced? Narrowing of the curriculum to what is tested. Cheating scandals. Gaming the system. Teacher demoralization. Teacher shortages.

Billions spent on testing instead of teaching.

But nowhere closer to the “top.” Even the NAEP scores went flat in 2015, the first reversal in many years.

The latest international test results show no gains in reading. None.

This failure belongs to Reformers.

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2017-12-05/other-countries-surpass-us-students-in-international-reading-comprehension-test

Categories Education Reform, International, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Privatization, Race to the Top

China’s “ Invisible Crisis” In Education

By dianeravitch
November 30, 2017 //
16

We have heard for years about the alleged superiority of Chinese education, based almost entirely on test scores on international assessments in which Shanghai comes out on top. Chinese-American scholar Yong Zhao warns in his books that Chinese education is not the paradigm that the Western media has fallen for. One scholar, Tom Loveless of Brookings, warned that Shanghai’s test-taking students were not representative of China. But they were ignored, and so we have been deluged with books and articles about why we should retool our education system so we could “surpass Shanghai” and why American mothers should get Tough and become “tiger moms.”

But wait!

Education in China, Christopher Balding writes, is so underdeveloped that it is a threat to the nation’s economic goals.

He writes:

“A widely held view in the West is that China’s schools are brimming with math and science whizzes, just the kind of students that companies of the future will need. But this is misleading: For years, headline-grabbing studies showing China’s prowess on standardized tests evaluated only kids in rich and unrepresentative areas. When its broader population was included, China’s ranking dropped across all subject areas.

“Official data bears out this dynamic. According to the 2010 census, less than 9 percent of Chinese had attended school beyond the secondary level. More than 65 percent had gone no further than junior high. From 2008 to 2016, China’s total number of graduate students actually decreased by 1 percent. Outside the richest areas, much of China’s population lacks even the basic skills required in a high-income economy.”

Outside of its prosperous urban centers, Chinese education is sharply restricted. Rote memorization continues to dominate even the classrooms in urban centers.

Time to stop mythologizing Chinese education and deal with our own realities.

Categories Fake News, International

BBC: More Than 50% of Teachers in England May Quit in Next Two Years

By dianeravitch
November 14, 2017 //
17

England has pursued education policies as retrograde as those in the U.S. for many years. It has a national curriculum and national tests. It turns over schools to businessmen who are willing to invest enough capital to privatize them. Forgotten in these grand schemes are the teachers, without whom there is no education.

The BBC reports that more than 50% of current teachers may quit in the next two years due to working conditions.

“The survey, conducted by the National Union of Teachers, found 61% of those wanting to leave blamed workload and 57% desired a better work/life balance.

“Two thirds of the 1,020 primary and secondary school teachers questioned felt morale in the profession had declined over the past five years.

“Schools minister Nick Gibb pledged to tackle excessive workloads.

“The findings of the survey are timely, because last month the five main teaching unions warned of a crisis in recruitment and retention, although the government maintains the vacancy rate has stayed stable at about 1%.

“The survey, undertaken with a representative sample of teachers, also suggested many were unhappy with some of the government’s plans.

*76% said forcing schools that require improvement to become academies would damage education

*62% said the plans for 500 new free schools would also damage education

*54% were not confident the new baseline test for four-year-olds would provide valid information about a child’s ability

“General secretary of the NUT, Christine Blower, said: “This survey demonstrates the combined, negative impact of the accountability agenda on teacher workload and morale.

“Teachers feel that the Department for Education’s work thus far to tackle workload has been totally inadequate.

“Meanwhile, nearly one million more pupils are coming into the system over the next decade. The government’s solution so far has been to build free schools, often where there are surplus places, and to allow class sizes to grow.

“Add to this a situation where teachers are leaving in droves and teacher recruitment remains low. We now have a perfect storm of crisis upon crisis in the schools system.”

Categories Education Reform, International, Teacher Shortage, Teachers

New Zealand: How Researchers Helped to Kill National Standards

By dianeravitch
October 29, 2017 //
43

New Zealand is one of the few—perhaps the only—nation that abandoned national standards.

As Professor Martin Thrupp Explains here, scholars and researchers helped to expose the flaws of national standards.

The national standards were driven by political, not educational, purposes. The ruling party pushed them and couldn’t stop pushing them, ignoring all criticism.

Thrupp’s book, co-edited with Bob Lingard, Meg Maguire, and David Hursh, “The Search for Better Educational Standards: A Cautionary Tale” teaches us that concerted efforts by educators, scholars, and parents can roll back ruinous education policy.

He writes:

“The National-led Government had become fully invested in the National Standards policy. When it was first announced in 2007, it was National’s big idea for education – the ‘cornerstone’ of its education policy. Over the 10 years that followed, the Government had dismissed all criticisms. Any late turning back would be a sign of weakness, and instead the National party wanted to plough on with this truly awful project that had already became a world-class example of how not to make education policy….

“Despite the National-led Government’s adherence to the National Standards, researchers and academics certainly pushed back against the policy…In fact, researchers and academics did a great deal in this space! A particular highlight for me was the 2012 open letter signed by over 100 education academics against the public release of the National Standards data. But there were countless other instances of academics and researchers opposing the National Standards, either publicly or more behind the scenes. Opinion pieces, articles, TV debates, radio, public meetings, meetings behind closed doors – and all the rest of it. Chapter 8 of A Cautionary Tale, about the politics of research, gives numerous examples.

“A number of us also did empirical research that helped to explain how the National Standards were a problem (see A Cautionary Tale, especially chapters 3, 5 and 7). And, of course, New Zealand researchers are part of international networks that are working on the same concerns about high-stakes assessment in other countries (see A Cautionary Tale, especially chapters 2 and 10). Note to Cullen: without doubt, some of the best work in this area is coming from Australian academics.

“It is true that some researchers and academics chose to support the National-led Government’s National Standards policies (A Cautionary Tale, chapter 8). This happened for various reasons that may have included the researchers’ educational views, their political beliefs, the political pressures that were upon them or their organisations, and the advantages that came with supporting the policy. It may have also involved a judgement that it was better to be ‘inside the tent’ and have influence than be on the outside.

“But this range of viewpoints among researchers and academics is no different than was seen within the teaching profession and amongst principals, where National Standards also had supporters. Indeed, a central problem that the new Labour-led Government will have to grapple with, having removed the National Standards policy, is doing away with the data-driven disposition amongst teachers and principals that grew along with the policy under the previous Government.

“Looking ahead

“Even though most teachers and principals did not like the impact of the National Standards policy, after a decade of its influence New Zealand primary schools are now marinated in the thinking, language, and expectations of the National Standards. This has also had wider impacts, for instance on early childhood education. It will all take a little while to undo.

“It’s great, though, that New Zealand primary schools will now be able to spend less time shoring up judgements about children – judgements that have often been pointless or harmful – and instead spend more time making learning relevant and interesting for each child. Removing National Standards should also allow teachers to be less burdened, contributing to making teaching a more attractive career again.”

Categories Common Core, Education Reform, International, Research

Phil Cullen: New Zealand Leads the World!

By dianeravitch
October 27, 2017 //
24

Phil Cullen of Australia is a zealous critic of his nation’s national testing and accountability regime.

He wrote about this important news from New Zealand, whose new government has decided to abandon the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM).

He wrote:

“New Zealand leads the world.

“New Zealand leads the way down under and maybe across the world in caring about kids.

“Its determination to return to sanity, humanity, progress, initiative and competence for its schooling system, which itself determines national progress in the long run, is now being unpacked and, I am told that the new coalition government contains a few former teachers and school-active parents around as heavyweights who can talk school and lead the conversion for a better world down under.

“There’s dynamic Tracey Martin, former School Board chair; Kelvin Davis, highly respected former principal and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party; and Winston Peters of NZ First and, Deputy PM who trained as a teacher. In Australia we only have legal eagles.

“Parent groups in NZ are claiming that now, teaching will be returned to the teaching profession and democracy will be returned to schooling in New Zealand soon. The isles are shaking with joy for kids.

“It’s a country that has always been to the forefront of school improvement but then, the take-over by the irrational managerialists and corporate heavy-weights circa 1990, and the addition of GERM in 2008, has had a detrimental impact that has lasted for a decade. They’ve had enough, now. We still tolerate it to our shame and academic deterioration.

“How come New Zealand leads the world now in the decontamination of the establishment’s unworthy, useless, immoral, unethical, unprofessional testucation procedures in schools? Well, there’s been a number of factors.

“Fortunately, during this period, it has had its crusaders for kids who just don’t give in too easily. It’s been a long and arduous battle, of the kind that must continue next door, in Australia.

“There’s Kelvin Smythe, former Chief Inspector and Allan Allach, energetic, thoughtful former primary school principal, reader and writer and Bruce Hammonds, former principal, consultant and writer – a valiant trio that has been unafraid to have their say. They set the pace.

“There’s Chris Hipkins, in particular, who has been the shadow Minister for Education whose inspirational speeches and talks have been based on a sound knowledge of schooling and who has been unequivocal in his aim to rid the country of testucation and de facto schooling.

“There’s the Primary Principals’ Association which kept its administrative distance from the government testucrats and compliant GERMans, never properly complying .

“While “The Government will never listen and nothing will change and we are just one little country.” Some timorous principals said, there were others of the association, especially the leader of the organisation, Whetu Cormick, described as “The greatest teacher organisation leader of our time,:” by Kelvin Smythe. We didn’t hold back, “At the other extreme are those like me,” he said “who will continue to fight to the end. We know that National Standards and all the ‘reforms’ that go with them are bad for our young people. Our young people have faith in us to protect their futures by continuing to fight for the best education that our young people deserve.” Looking directly into the face of Nikki Kay, the then Minister, he said, “Let’s wait no longer to get our young people on the road to success. Let’s put up a big STOP NATIONAL STANDARDS.” The organsation has always been fearless…

Click to access opinion_piece_nzpf_presidents_column_on_ns_may_31_2011_.pdf

“There’s Diane Kahn and the Save Our Schools organisation whose prime target has always been the elimination of ‘national standards’ and was heavy and constant with dynamic opposition. [ https://saveourschoolsnz.com/ ]

“There’s an influential Kiwi sciolist [aka schooliolist – one who pretends to be well informed about schooling] and academic testucator who played a significant role in the introduction of testucation into NZ…..who left the country at the right time.

___________________________________________
“There are some messages for Australia. In world schooling terms, it is the boondocks of failed political schooling, the backward West Island of learning progress, the most over-tested country in the world.

“A political party needs to think. Does it believe in providing the best schooling possible, or doesn’t it give a damn as Aussie political parties do?

“Listening to schooliolist academic know-alls, qualified testucators, loud-mouth politicians, corporate unions [like IPA, BCA and Farmers] inhabited by conservative capitalists, neo-libs and delcons, which still rule the roost on the west side of the ditch, continues to lead Australian schooling in the wrong direction. New Zealand has now told these cocky roosters what to do with their distasteful attitude to children.

“Australian schools are in dire need of some Finnish-ing tactics.” said Wendy Knight in The Age….and we can now add: ‘and some Kiwi tactics’. What really happens in a good school system? Why don’t we look around and learn?
An example of off-the-hip, loud-mouth political interference is contained in suggestions made in Treasurer Morrison’s Shifting the Dial, another imported kind of measurement.

“It presumes that the hiring of skilled subject specialists like mathematicians will improve standards in schools. It overlooks the reality that real teachers teach real pupils….real people! The secret is in the interaction. They teach them about mathematics, to like mathematics. They don’t get up in front of a class and pontificate about what they themselves know. Effective teachers of anything operate from the learner’s level. Socrates was a better teacher of Maths than Einstein and a better teacher of literature than Shakespeare. His pupils learned how to learn.

“A strong and outspoken principals’ association can be truly influential as they are in NZ. Protection of children and their future as well as the provision of a rich holistic curriculum, undaunted by fearful interruptions to positive learning, should dominate the spirit of every principal’s personal professional code. Laxity, timidity, compliance and silence have no place in their organisations when the chips are down for kids….as they are now in Australia.

“It’s looking more evident every day that the lower half of the existing Lib-Lab delcon group viz. Labor under Shorten, will be the government after the next federal election in Australia. The lib-lab neo-con conventions will probably continue as they did in the passing of klein deforms from Labor to Liberal. Neither political group, Labor nor Liberal, ever expresses any thoughts about the continuance of the Klein system of schooling, now almost a decade old ; and which should go because it is proving useless.

“Neither party knows much about schooling and hides its ignorance by talking only Gonksi and funding and teacher quality. For them, the plight of children lies in the dollar sign, not in compassion and humanity and learning and in experience and excellence. Each remains ultra-complacent by making do, making silly schooling decisions, maintaining the mediocre, and supporting private schools before helping public schools.{Remember DOGS – Defence of Government Schools?} A country that treats its children the way that Australia does, is in for big trouble….really big trouble.

“It just won’t be able to handled itself in world affairs.

“It relies on the cockeyed Gillard Theory of Testucation, using Kleinism to control operatives and operations, to no end except to gather data; then ignores the basic laws of administrative order and effectiveness [Campbell, Goodhart, Lucas and Common Sense] and treats the electorate as if everyone is a dill or doesn’t care what happens to kids. The present government will go while it maintains these attitudes to schooling and doesn’t have the capacity to think. The Labor Party will replace it and not do any better. Both need to think seriously about schooling…very, very seriously.

ooo000ooo

“I’m deliberately apolitical and have voted informal at the last few federal elections because I’ve been offered only lower-order policies in general and crazy views about schooling. …nothing that really suggests that there is a healthy future for this wonderful country. Schooling is the most important issue of this century for Aussie citizens. If it is not rejuvenated, Australia has some big problems coming up. I’ll vote for any party -Pauline’s, Bob’s, Nick’s, Jacqui’s, anybody who says that it will get rid of NAPLAN.

“I’ll know by its standard of advocacy that such a party likes kids, that it is thinking and will do something about our future. Our present klein system relies on child abuse.

“I’ll study the detail of course, but no party can be so blithely ignorant of schooling as our major parties are at present. Their mentors can only bark Gonski, data, scores, testing, funding, teacher quality with schooliolist pedantry and no regard for the real spirit of learning at school.

“Seriously – rejuvenation of schooling from the mess of mass testucation will be very difficult. Unscrambling an egg always is. Since New Zealand will have to do the job before Australia wakes up, it might be wise to locate some observers there to learn how to go about it.

“We need to do what New Zealand has done :

“DECLARE OURSELVES

“It’s rejuvenation time down under!

“THANKS NEW ZEALAND”

Categories Accountability, Failure, Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International, Testing

Phil Cullen: Is Australian Schooling A Joke?

By dianeravitch
October 14, 2017 //
11

Phil Cullen is one of the most outspoken critics of Australia’s system of standards and testing, called NAPLAN. That stands for National Assessment Program—Literacy and Numeracy. Cullen thinks this regime spells the death of childhood and education.

If you want to get on Phil’s Email list, you can reach him at cphilcullen@bigpond.com.

Is Australian Schooling a joke?

aogjlfkdnokhcack

If it isn’t why do we do what we do?

bdb19fb87aa0c61d227568ec77ca4006--funny-teacher-quotes-funny-school-quotes (1)

That’s NAPLAN for you.

1475381448438

It has its own peculiarities.

sia-soliola-billy-slater-tackle-tall

We are told how to handle kids.

Do as you are told.

Be tough.

Stick to the rules.

cpd-blog-post-170717-slide-09-tg

That’s IT

TEST. TEST. TEST

A data-driven testucation system always gets results.

What happened to Australia’s?

1199

The International test scores tell the story.  What’s wrong?

Of course………………..

cool-cartoon-1727740

YES! That big thing in the classroom IS an elephant.

Some think they have it under control….

f77a445f8a0a5acb49bf2f6b3656c549--teacher-humour-teaching-humor

chcheacnmlbeipbe

Categories Accountability, Education Reform, International, Testing

Join Me for Andy Hargreaves’ Lecture at Wellesley College on October 19: TEACHING FOR GOOD!!

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2017 //
4

Andy Hargreaves is an internationally renowned expert on teaching and a proponent of teacher collaboration. He very kindly agreed to step in at the last moment when Linda Darling-Hammond, the originally scheduled speaker, fell ill and was unable to travel.

Andy Hargreaves is Thomas More Brennan Chair, Lynch School of Education, Boston College. He is a renowned scholar of international education, teaching, and education reform who consults with organizations and governments all over the world, Andy Hargreaves is author or editor of over 30 books. He will describe what teaching for life, not just for tests, skills, careers, or individual gain looks like in different communities internationally where teachers work together to fight for dignity, peace, and democracy, even in the most difficult circumstances. Drawing on examples from around the world, he will discuss how we can help teachers in the United States work together to teach for good in their communities.

Andy Hargreaves received the Grawemeyer Award in 2015 with his co-author Michael Fullan for their work on the transformative power of teacher collaboration.

We will miss Linda, but are so fortunate that Andy agreed to speak. It will be a great evening. It won’t be live-streamed, but the video will be posted on YouTube.

Screen Shot 2017-10-10 at 7.29.43 PM

Categories Education Reform, International, Teachers and Teaching
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »