Protect NSW students and schools from damaging league tables

‘My school’ first step to teacher hiring and firing on test results

jfield — 2010-02-24T05:05:46Z

Background: Klein extends ‘my school’ rankings to teachers

New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein has broken an agreement with teachers and introduced a Teacher Data Report Card[1] system that:

report the average achievement outcomes of students in their classes in year 4 to 8 Maths and English State-wide tests
report on the improvement (“value added”) in these scores compared to similar classes in other schools
‘red flag’ teachers that are in the bottom 25% of value added[2].

Last week (11 Feb 2010) these Teacher Data Report Cards and in particular the red flagging became important considerations in the decision to grant or deny tenure to NYC school teachers.

Significance: Gillard is a Klein-follower

Australian Education Minister Julia Gillard has often quoted[3] Joel Klein and his market-oriented policies as a guiding light in her ‘reforms’ to school education. Her forcing of the ‘my school’ website onto states was directly motivated by Joel Klein’s name-and-shame website.

Julia Gillard has already suggested[4] that parents should use her ‘my school’ website to harass teachers, saying that “We would expect parents to have robust conversations with teachers and principals”.

Issues with Teacher Data Report cards

All the accusations made against the ‘my school’ website apply to ‘my teacher’ report cards. They will

be deeply misleading. Any attempt to say that classes are comparable based on statistical measures will be fraught with errors. Attempts to assign all of the outcomes to teachers is problematic. Large errors in the test result averages (caused by the test itself, factors on the day and normalisation of results) will be amplified into the value added outcomes,
encourage teaching to the test at the expense of important curriculum time for disciplines other than literacy and numeracy,
discourage good teachers from taking on difficult classes where ‘value adding’ is harder to achieve,
unfairly stigmatise good teachers, and
divide staffrooms and damage cooperative behaviour by pitting teacher against teacher.

Comments:

Greens NSW MP John Kaye said: “Education policy in Australia is increasing determined by the market-ideology coming from New York City School Chancellor Joel Klein.

“Joel Klein’s agenda is to set up competition between schools by reducing all educational outcomes to a simple set of numbers. Australia’s Julia Gillard has signed on and having imposed it on schools, her clear next step is teachers.

“Julia Gillard has already told parents to harass teachers based on the school’s performance on her website. Joel Klein is pushing her to the next step with teacher report cards based on class performance. It is only a matter of time before ‘my school’ becomes ‘my teacher’.

“Even if Julia Gillard and Verity Firth deny they have any intention of going down this path, it is the logical conclusion of the ‘my school’ website. It would be open for any future government to move down this path.

“Setting teacher against teacher by reducing their professional work to a single set of numbers will undermine educational outcomes in Australia.

“Joel Klein’s teacher report cards are a recipe for educational disaster. The pressure to teach to the test will force educators to sacrifice important curriculum time for areas not covered in the tests. Staffroom cooperation will be undermined and it will become much harder to find teachers for difficult to educate classes.

“All the problems with trying to compare ‘like schools’ will be amplified in identifying ‘like classes’. The underlying data is just not accurate enough to make these kinds of judgements.

“Julia Gillard’s ideological mentor is proudly playing Russian roulette with teachers’ careers. In his rush to reduce education to a commodity, he is stigmatising dedicated educators and devastating quality outcomes,” Dr Kaye said.

For more information: John Kaye 0407 195 455

Comments also available from Trevor Cobbold Save Our Schools on 0410 121 640

[1] http://schools.nyc.gov/Teachers/Spotlight/tenure_letter_2-11-10.htm

[2] http://schools.nyc.gov/NR/rdonlyres/D866D9E6-0240-407B-BA3D-E58D49F52B70/77479/FINALTeacherFAQ21110.pdf

[3] For example, "Joel Klein's model has made a difference to those pockets of poverty and disadvantage," and "When you see a model that is working in some of those tough suburbs in New York, I think you've got to take notice of it," Ms Gillard said. (http://news.smh.com.au/national/gillard-mum-on-schools-money-ration-20080831-467a.html)

[4] http://www.smh.com.au/national/education/tell-off-deficient-teachers-gillard-20100125-muk7.html

'My school' first step to teacher hiring and firing on test results

jfield — 2010-02-22T03:27:12Z

'Teachers brace for another New York initiative', Sydney Morning herald 22 February 2010

Greens NSW MP John Kaye said: "New York School Chancellor and Julia Gillard mentor Joel Klein has introduced teacher report cards based on year 4 to 8 maths and English test results.

"Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard has refused to rule out introducing the same system in Australia.

"Ms Gillard has already told parents to harass teachers based on the school's performance on her website. Joel Klein is setting the pace with teacher report cards based on class performance.

"It is only a matter of time before 'my school' becomes 'my teacher'.

"Joel Klein's teacher report cards are a recipe for educational disaster. The pressure to teach to the test will force educators to sacrifice important curriculum time for areas not covered in the tests. Staffroom cooperation will be undermined and it will become much harder to find teachers for difficult to educate classes.

"The report cards will be deeply misleading and unfair. There are many factors other than teacher performance that determine test results.

"All the problems with trying to compare 'like schools' will be amplified in identifying 'like classes'. The underlying data is just not accurate enough or sufficiently relevant to make these kinds of judgements.

"Julia Gillard's ideological mentor is proudly playing Russian roulette with teachers' careers.

"In his rush to reduce education to a commodity, Mr Klein is stigmatising dedicated educators and devastating quality outcomes.

"Ms Firth should rule out teacher report cards based on NAPLAN results in NSW schools," Dr Kaye said.

For more information: John Kaye 0407 195 455

US experience points finger at 'My school' website

jfield — 2010-02-17T22:05:55Z

Commenting in today's Sydney Morning Herald ('Better supervision of tests needed to stop cheats, say schools', p4), Dr Kaye said: "NSW Education Minister Verity Firth and her federal colleague Julia Gillard have created yet more misery for disadvantaged schools.

"Teachers and school leaders doing the right thing will be forced to watch their reputation being trashed while a small minority of schools enhance their reputations by altering their students' results.

"The Rudd government's 'name and shame' policies will increasingly punish schools that do the right thing.

"While the overwhelming majority of teachers will resist the temptation to alter test scores, schools that cheat will add to the already substantial unreliability of the my school website.

"The longer this charade is allowed to run, the less meaning the website will have. Julia Gillard is putting enormous pressure on the profession to teach to the test and to alter scores.

"This is further evidence that the 'my school' circus will distort learning outcomes and fail to provide accountability and school improvement.

"Test cheating in Georgia and the massive discrepancy between school test results in New York state and national tests should sound very loud alarm bells for Education Ministers Julia Gillard and Verity Firth.

"Their name-and-shame policies are a poor substitute for supporting public schools," Dr Kaye said.

For more information: John Kaye 0407 195 455

Sydney paper's crude school ranking is damaging and deceptive

jfield — 2010-02-04T00:58:15Z

Dr Kaye said: "This is the first step in the race to destroying quality education and demoralising schools that serve disadvantaged communities.

"The Herald, using data pulled from Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard's website, has averaged literacy and numeracy test results to produce a top to bottom ranking that will mislead parents and undermine education.

"Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard and her NSW colleague Verity Firth claim that they are opposed to league tables. Within 24 hours of their 'my school' site going live, at least one media outlet has harvested the data and produced a crude and damaging league table.

"Julia Gillard and Verity Firth's obsession with reducing educational achievement to a table of numbers has exposed many excellent schools to the slander of a poor ranking.

"They have started the process of forcing teachers to sacrifice curriculum time to teach to these narrow tests.

"The nation's education ministers bear a heavy responsibility for failing to act on the lessons of the USA and the UK.

"Ranking schools on the basis of their average NAPLAN results is statistically unsound and will produce results that do not accurately measure the progress made by students, even within the areas of literacy and numeracy.

"The Herald's high school results are particularly meaningless. Half of the score is based on year 7 tests conducted in the first three months of a student's time at that school. The outcomes have very little to do with what happens at the school supposedly being ranked.

"The Herald's school ranking is not 'information' but a simplistic and misleading index that will add nothing to the understanding of schools and their needs," Dr Kaye said.

For more information: John Kaye 0407 195 455

Feature: What Julia Gillard's 'My School' website won't tell you

jfield — 2010-02-02T04:12:49Z

While Ms Gillard says her site will provide ‘rich contextual information’ against which the numerical results can be interpreted, she and her state and federal colleagues have been prepared to go ahead with the reales of the data without any information about the resources available to individual schools.

Background

The Minister originally promised that the website would contain a breakdown of all sources of income, broken down by source (i.e. government, fees and other).

While the private school lobby objected to the inclusion of funding data, the Minister pushed ahead.

Subsequently, the funding data was dropped on the grounds that it would be administratively too difficult to collect, at least for this year.

Funding

The data that the website does not reveal includes:

42 wealthy private schools receiving more than $2 million a year in state and federal subsidies (see below for the full list), including

Schools such as Trinity, Pymble Ladies College, Barker College, MLC Burwood, Kings, Knox and Newington receiving more than $5 million in public funding per year.

This comes on top of these schools collecting tens of millions in fees, all of which remains hidden on Minister Gillard’s website.

John's Comments:

Greens NSW MP John Kaye said: “The absence of school funding data adds yet another layer of deception to the ‘my school’ website.

“Not only are the school test results deeply misleading, but important information about government subsidies to private schools and private income has been deliberately withheld.

“Without information on the amount of money collected in fees and the subsidies paid by state and federal governments, the website’s claim to provide ‘rich contextual information’ is nonsense.

“The website should not have gone ahead without the full set of data. Along with all the other statistical problems, community members are left guess as to the relative wealth of the schools they are supposed to be judging.

“With schools like Trinity, Pymble Ladies College, MLC Burwood, Kings and Knox receiving more than $5 million a year in subsidies, it is little wonder that the information on both fees and government funding has been suppressed.

“We estimated that at least ten wealthy NSW private schools pulled in more than $35 million a year in fees and other charges as well as government subsidies. That is substantially more than twice the amount equivalent-sized public schools would have spent.

“Community members looking at the ‘my school’ site for schools like Trinity, Barker, Scots, Pymble Ladies College and Sydney Grammar would not know that they earned more than $44 million in government subsidies, fees and other income. They would not know that a typical one thousand student public high school had less than $14 million spent on teachers and other operating costs.

“Julia Gillard and Verity Firth are keen to promote their so-called ‘transparency agenda’ so long as it does not offend the wealthy private school lobby.

“Excuses about the data being too difficult to collect and that it will happen sometime in the future do not excuse the appalling absence of funding details in the first release of the website.

“Parents should treat the ‘my school’ website and the league tables that have been derived from it with the contempt they deserve.

“Excuses about rich contextualised information and full transparency are worthless when important data like the income and subsidies of private schools are hidden from public view,” Dr Kaye said.