The Propaganda Begins

National School Testing A Lame Duck

Regular readers of our blog will know that we have remained sceptical of the New Zealand government's showcase reform--the introduction of national standards testing in reading, writing, and arithmetic in our primary schools. This is not because we are opposed to such testing in principle. Rather, it is because the imposition of national testing upon an unwilling state school system is unlikely to succeed. The government has been naive and simplistic in seeking to graft national testing on top of an intellectually bankrupt state education system.

Australia has such a national standards testing system--code named NAPLAN. It is based in part upon similar initiatives in the United States. Criticisms are now beginning to surface. A recent piece in the Sydney Morning Herald began with the headline: "NAPLAN-style testing has 'failed' US schools". Catch the drift.

The first criticism: the tests narrow down the curriculum to focus upon literacy and numeracy. Now in many human activities focus upon essentials is regarded as a virtue. But not in modern education. The only essential is the pupil in the prevailing state approach of "child centred learning". The framing of tests as "narrowing down" the curriculum is consistent with post modern and neo-Marxist theoretical constructions of education, together with the prevailing pedagogical idea of allowing children to construct their own curriculum.

National testing is seen to be forcing children into a constrained, imprisoning, mental and social straitjacket. In fact, however, everybody really knows that the rest of the curriculum is worthless and inaccessible if the pupil cannot read, write, or figure. You don't even get on the board to begin to play without these vital pre-requisites. But without reframing education into a more traditional and historical context, and publicly rejecting modern pedagogical inanity, the government will lose the ideological war. In New Zealand, the government has given little indication that it even understands that an ideological war needs to be fought. It appears to have concluded that introducing national standards is a relatively minor tweak--an administrative, operational detail. Far from it. It cuts at the vitals of the dominant modern educational paradigm.

The second criticism in the SMH article is that national testing creates perverse incentives for teachers.

Schools and individual teachers have been judged and rewarded financially for improving student test scores and punished for poor ones. This led to many of the best teachers abandoning schools in the disadvantaged areas, with some teachers accused of teaching to the test and others of helping children cheat to improve results.

What? Have not the educational unions been assuring us, proclaiming loudly from the rooftops, that teachers are dedicated professionals, of exemplary character? Now we are finding that they are not--and this puts NAPLAN in jeopardy. There are now signs in the Australian education system that Aussie teachers are as unethical as their US counterparts.

In Australia, there are signs of teachers "teaching to" the NAPLAN tests, helping students cheat and decreasing student participation rates. While the basic skills literacy and numeracy tests were designed to help teachers identify children with learning difficulties needing assistance, they are now being used as a competitive measure of school performance on the federal government's My School website. Many parents use the scores as the basis for choosing a school.

Better then to scrub the whole thing, right? Nah. When a company--any company--puts incentives for staff in place, it risks creating perverse behaviours--ripping customers off, selling them things they don't really need or want, manipulation of the system, lying and false reporting--etc. Should incentives be tossed out? No--but gaming the system must become a discipline offence--a breach of contract, something that could result in termination. Teachers, principals and schools need to know that unethical behaviour and gaming of national tests will result in breaches of contract and terminations. That would go a long way to stomping out gaming.

Is the Ministry of Education in New Zealand ready for this? They give no sign. National testing for literacy and numeracy in state schools is not a minor tweak, an easily-facilitated-add on. It goes entirely against the grain of modern pedagogy and the state education system in this country. Without a root-and-branch reform it will never be allowed to take hold. Top-down reforms no longer work, because the vested interests, the ideological educrats, have far too strong a hold.

We believe that the only way to move forward is to introduce a national voucher system--which would have the effect of putting parents back in the driving seat as the clients of the system. Now, this would also mean that some children (of uncaring, irresponsible parents) will likely fail. But rest assured, parents would be far more demanding than Ministry of Education educrats. Each school would have, under a universal voucher system, to justify its existence and its achievements to a free-to-choose marketplace of parents, who would become the customers and clients of the system. Not only would some children fail, but some schools would inevitably fail--unless and until they pulled their socks up.

A national voucher system would help disenfranchise the teacher unions. But even such a radical gordian-knot reformation of the system cannot be allowed to stand alone: to succeed it must be supported by other reforms, such as abolishing teacher registration (by which the current establishment controls the supply of teachers and has far too much say in who enters the profession.)