In the fourth season of the brilliant HBO crime series The Wire, disgraced cop Roland Pryzbylewski (Jim True-Frost) finds employment as a teacher in a disadvantaged school in Baltimore. Mr Prezbo, as the kids call him, has this idealistic notion that he is going to introduce the world of the mind to these black kids, who know more about selling caps of dope off the corner than anything.
At the very moment when Prezbo is making hard-won progress, the edict comes down that he is to prepare his students for the periodic diagnostic test on whose successful completion the funding of every school in Baltimore is dependent. Results, too, which governments can point to as evidence of the success of educational policies. Only education has got nothing to do with it as Prezbo points out when he protests that the test is culturally alien to these kids and largely meaningless as a result. The school authorities are deaf to his entreaties. Teach to the test, he is told.
Teaching to the test is what education authorities increasingly require of teachers. It already happens in Year 12 where students are coached to reproduce the answers that the assessors expect. If students learn anything in Year 12, it is that competition is king in the world they are about to enter. They will also understand that they are expected to conform. At which point students would have every right to feel betrayed by their teachers who, up until this final year, have sought to open the minds of their charges to the infinite possibilities of learning.
Already Year 12 results are considered to be synonymous with success. Rather than being indicators of a student’s ability to play the game of Year 12, exam results are thought of more and more as parameters of destiny. One of the significant problems teachers face is convincing Year 12 students that there is more to their young lives than a 99.95 score. The prevailing culture, though, is telling them otherwise.
As more and more importance is placed on Year 12 results, the Year 12 ethic of gruelling competition trickles down into the more junior years. Year 11 becomes the dress rehearsal for Year 12 and Year 10 for Year 11. And so it goes. No wonder parents of students in Years 7 and 8 are anxious to know that their children are being adequately prepared for the daunting years ahead. These same parents will draw upon the information soon to be published online by education authorities.
Parents have every right to know how their child’s school is performing in relation to other schools. The only problem is that the information is based on flawed data since it is largely derived from the results of the National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) diagnostic testing. NAPLAN is a version of those ghastly tests that students have been made to submit to since the 1960s. You know the kind of thing: brain teasers about relative velocities and the like. Horrible. And of very limited educational value.
Governments are backing NAPLAN and the provision of what Julia Gillard calls “rich data” for two reasons. The first is to better target struggling schools for funding and intervention. The second is to satisfy parents that their children are being adequately catered for by the system. It is really the same reason: governments are looking to satisfy voters.
Parents may feel empowered by the new statistical information but they need to be wary of the so-called rich data. Like the black kids in Mr Prezbo’s class, there will be cultural reasons why some children do not respond to elements of NAPLAN. This is not to say that teachers should not try to mould their students into productive citizens. Of course they must. But in education one size does not fit all. A school that the online data suggest is struggling, according to the parameters set by NAPLAN, may in fact be doing a wonderful job of providing an education.
In the meantime, those parents of apparently under-performing schools will inundate the school management with their concerns and demands. The cynical might see all this as a clever confidence trick perpetrated by federal and state education authorities. When things go awry in the system, education ministers, like the proverbial bad workman, will be able to blame their tools.
Is the issue with universal testing of students or is it the argument that NAPLAN is a bad test?
Is all testing “culturally alien” or it just multi-choice box ticks that are the problem?
I completely disagree with the assertion that “more and more importance is placed on Year 12 results”. Year 12 results have been a big deal for years. The strong emphasis on achievement and getting into the best uni course has been around for years. Its a result of aspirational parents, not the schooling system.
Year 12 is normally the point in time when kids realize they are very small fish in a very big pond. Where you rank at your school has very little relation to where you rank in the state.
Is the alternative to using NAPLAN to base the ranking of schools as it is currently done using year 12 study score results? It is naive to think that year 12 results are not currently being used in marketing material. Strong year 12 results by public schools can increase house prices in their catchment zones, so people are paying attention.
I, like Energypedant, am a little confused. I went to 7 public schools in 3 states and I don’t remember any of them having problems with kids and crime to the level as described by HBO, even in Victoria, but I digress. My understanding is the NAPLAN is a test to identify the level children have achieved in the areas of reading, writing and arithmetic. Not particularly confusing or contentious, pretty standard fair most parents want for their kids. So doesn’t the test cover this? Does it go into some strange areas I’m not aware of.
I WANT TO KNOW HOW MY LOCAL SCHOOLS ARE GOING. My child’s education is important to me and these results will at least give me something to validate or work with. I wish the teacher’s union would stop generalising parents, we aren’t being threatened.
I grabbed the Prezbo clip from Youtube earlier today for a post. It’s very instructive of the dazzling intelligence of one child, outside the parameters of arithmatic – he picks the right answer to a maths question based on body language (‘the dinks’) of the teacher, as confident as any corner kid might be trained up on observing the street for actual survival. Indeed this child was playing with Prezbo like he was the child – which he was as a first year teacher.
But as they series develops Prezbo turns out to be a very good teacher.
So Gillard’s main argument seems to be cohorts of 60 schools will be in a league table of their own to compare like with like (as per web designer on World Today just now). My main issue is the philosophy of schools – to produce widgets for the economy, for an ambitious first female PM?
As a student who was 1 of 225 students in Year 7, and one of 51 to make it to Year 12, one of 17 to pass year 12, and one of only 3 to make it to a University/Tertiary Institution in first round offers. I’m all for a league table, but it depends what we want to do with it.
If we want to use it to market to parents that you should move your child from a school like mine to theirs, then nope because despite my school being as clearly crap as it was, I’ve managed a pretty good professional working life. I however, can’t speak for the 174 who didn’t even attempt Year 12.
If you want to use it to provide federal funding where it’s needed then maybe I could be swayed. But all that will happen is the fed government will pump money in, the state government will pull money out and the funding will remain largely at the same level.
This is about local recruitment strategies and closing poorly performing government schools by student attrition. God help the future of this country if after league tables we start talking about school vouchers. . .
How can the ACER diagnostic type testing used for NAPLAN tell you how well a student has learnt to read, write or do their numbers.
I am quite sure that children subjected to tests in years 3, 5, and 7 will realise that they are very small fish in a very large sea, and is that useful for their development? I don’t think so. The reason we stopped testing children at the end of each grade in about 1950 is we didn’t want to crush their self esteem, by keeping them down if they didn’t attain the standard. Now we test the individual child and punish the whole class and their hapless teacher