Teen performance decreases

Both papers today had a summary of the Andrew Leigh and Chris Ryan paper:

 

 http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/teen-performance-on-three-rs-in-decline/2008/02/10/1202578601344.html

 

I couldn't find the online version of the Herald Sun article.

 

The original research article is here:

 

 http://econrsss.anu.edu.au/~aleigh/

 

I bet the reporters who wrote the articles didn't read all 47 pages of the report and just rehashed the summary. Overall, I am not convinced that the report proves anything. Students today certainly don't have the basic arithmetic skills that their grand parents had. The use of calculators have killed that - who does long division any more? I am dubious that the tests are testing the same thing and even the authors admit that there is a lot more that students today learn compared to their grand parents. The ability to adapt to new technology is one such area.

 

Education is different. Compare any subject now with what was done in the '60s. A student from today would struggle back then and vice versa.

 

As for class sizes, I find the ideal size is about 20. Too much smaller and you don't get the interaction that teachers like today and too much bigger you don't get to see the kids individually as much as you like. There is no way we could go back to the class size in the 30s we had when I first started. Besides the school rooms are not big enough.

Tough schools to get 'better' teachers

Saturday's The Age had an article that gives some clues as to what the government may want in the current wage negotiations.

 

http://www.theage.com.au/text/articles/2008/02/08/1202234169441.html 

 

Top teachers, including graduates, would get a bonus to teach in underperforming schools. Good luck to them. It'll be interesting to see if it works. My guess is that it won't. One, the government won't be willing to pay enough. Secondly, tossing the graduates into that environment is more likely to put them off teaching for good unless they get an amazing amount of support, which the government is unlikely to provide. Teachers tend to like to teach in areas similar to those they grow up in. How many teachers originally from the western suburbs are there in the education system?

 

Incidentally, if the staff succeed and pull up a school so that it is no longer underperforming, will that mean that their salary will then go down? If they don't, how does this accord with schools that already are performing to the correct 'standards'? That would be unfair on those teachers and schools already doing a good job.

 

One good thing in the article seems to be that the government wants a reduction in the number of pupil-free days. I've said before all-school pupil-free days are a waste of resources. Using a scatter-gun approach to professional development never works. They might want to also look a t the number of days some staff take off for PD. It is ridiculous the number of days taken off. I hear that there is a new process for applying for departmental PD that has a ridiculous number of hoops to jump through. That ought to slow things down a little. I'll have to investigate this.

'Parasites' deserve a place at the table

A Charles Spicer wrote a letter in The Sunday Age having a go at the teachers' union. It's reproduced below.

 

Although it does a lot of good, the Australian Education Union also does a lot of harm. I'm old enough to remember strikes they have called on ideological grounds, which have had nothing to do with teaching. I can sympathise with Charles. Because of the AEU, in recent years we have had to put up with the VIT (Victorian Institute of Leeches) and, as Charles pointed out, the appalling agreement in 2004. Like him, I voted against it, one of two in my school I believe. It was that agreement that put us so far behind. I know Charles is not the only teacher who was disenchanted with the AEU and gave them the flick.

 

I think one of the problems is that the union is run by non-teachers. When was Mary Bluett last in the classroom?

 

'Parasites' deserve a place at the table

Juliette Hughes, The Ethicist ("Should you go on strike if your union asks you?" 3/2), refers to non-union members of the teaching fraternity as "merely parasitical".

I doubt that the Australian Education Union represents half of all serving teachers in Victoria, and yet they hold all the power at the negotiating table during discussions with the government.

During the 2004 Schools Agreement talks, I contacted the government as I wanted to contribute to the discussion. I was told I had to speak to the union. I then contacted the union and they hung up on me when I told them I was not a member.

As this door closed I turned to my usual course of action and wrote letters to the minister.

Unfortunately, under the Bracks/Brumby Government, I only received the standard auto reply of "we'll get back to you", which they never do.

When it came time to vote on the agreement, I voted against it but was in the minority. I had no choice but to accept the umpire's decision, however flawed, in order to continue doing what I love.

Having been a member of a union, I believe the AEU has continually let its members down and therefore I choose not to join.

I do, however, continue to lobby the government and have been described by senior bureaucrats as an "activist", although none of these people have shown me the courtesy of actually speaking to me and finding out whether I am rational or otherwise.

It is my hope that all teachers, and not simply unionists, will be able to have more of a say in their working conditions in the future.

That way "parasites" such as myself can finally play a role in changing education in Victoria for the better.

CHARLES SPICER, Glen Waverley

Nurses in Schools

The teachers' union made The Sunday Age in a couple of articles. The first is for a nurse for every school.

 

http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/union-seeks-allergy-nurse-for-every-school/2008/02/09/1202234230280.html

 

In a nutshell, that isn't going to happen. I was in a small school and it had a nurse three days a week. I'm in a larger school with five times the kids and it doesn't get a nurse. Some brilliant decision making is going on here.

 

All teachers are supposed to have been trained on using EPipens. We had a staff meeting mostly devoted to it. What a waste of time. We didn't get to try or even touch the EPipen. The presenter told us what to do and that was it. Our school hadn't even decided where to put the EPipens. If I had a case I wouldn't have a clue what to do except call for the assistant principal, which might be the best thing anyway.

 

When the government says all teachers will be trained in something you can rest assured that it will be poor (and cheap) and probably useless training.

Merit Pay

The education section of The Age brought up the idea of merit pay again. The article quotes Dr Andrew Leigh from the ANU. The link is here:

 

http://www.theage.com.au/news/education-news/push-for-trial-of-merit-pay/2008/02/01/1201801039692.html 

 

The Age article linked back to Andrew Leigh's web site but I couldn't find his original comments. Despite his comments, I have do not know of any place where merit pay has worked. The small example from Denver Colorado quoted shows the problem and has very little to do with merit.

 

It offers an extra 3% if the teacher goes to a hard-to-staff school. What has this to do with merit? And I would want a lot more than 3% to take on some of the schools in Victoria.

On the merit side it offers 3% if test scores exceed expectations. Does this mean all subjects are now tested? It will side effect of making teachers teach to the test. Does it mean every student has to exceed expectations? There will be a rush to teach 'good' classes. What about the 'unteachable' student. There are only a few but some students have no interest in doing anything with school. And despite the rhetoric by politicians a school is not going to be able to do anything with them.

 

They offer an extra 9% for extra degrees etc. Extra qualifications should be rewarded but it doesn't necessarily make a better teacher. Extra 2% for professional development (PD) - given the amount of rubbish PD we get shoved down our throats we deserve the extra for having to put up with it.

Criminal Teachers

The Herald Sun started the week with some front page teacher bashing:

 

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23154163-661,00.html 

 

Mind you, more column centimetres were spent on plugging their Monopoly game than on their so-called exposé on criminal teachers so things aren't too bad.

 

I'm not sure if the little paper expects teachers to be paragons of virtue or not, or whether it was just a bit of a beat up. Christian Bennett, writing in the letters to the editor the next day made the interesting comment: "Imagine the outcry if a school demanded full disclosure of its parents' past deeds. It would soon become a very small school."

 

Yes, teachers do have an influence on kids lives but parental attitudes are a far bigger influence. As a principal once said, we're trying to instill behaviour patterns in some students in the few hours we see them that parents have no ability to teach them.

Stop holding back top students

The new grand pooh bah of education, Professor Barry McGaw, says we are holding back our top students by concentrating on the weaker ones.

 

http://www.theage.com.au/news/education-news/stop-holding-back-top-students-curriculum-chief/2008/01/31/1201714153287.html

 

That will certainly put the cat amongst the curriculum pigeons. Unfortunately, with the way school are under-resourced and are set up it is difficult to cater for all abilities. Streaming has been tried and found wanting. No, I don't have an answer but I bet Prof. McGaw doesn't have one either.

 

He is quoted as saying, "Any plans to develop a nationally consistent curriculum could fail without additional resources for schools." I think he used the wrong word. It should be 'will' not 'could'. If it is like every other initiative, such as VELS, we'll get plenty of web sites to look through, as if we have nothing else or better to do but spend hours trawling through the Internet. Occasionally, we get bored to death by departmental apparatchiks doing their best to earn their bonuses. Somebody needs to teach bureaucrats how to produce a PowerPoint presentation. The coal face is not the place to be.

 

In the science area, schools have been gradually getting further behind in the technological area. Last year, for the first time in about 40 years as far as I can remember, money was actually allocated to schools to buy resources to help bring schools up-to-date. It wasn't enough and let's hope it's not another 40 years before it is done again.