Tolley and her friends show their true colours

February 5, 2010

First, thanks for all the encouraging comments by readers of this blog, especially in relation to the National Standards debate. This will probably be my final post on this issue (unless the debate moves to newer ground or a higher level – not expected any time soon). I’m not a teacher and have no great axe to grind, apart from a strengthening opinion. But I am seeing some interesting facets regarding human nature, people and politics which the debate is bringing to the surface.

Increasingly in recent years I’ve found myself mulling over the characteristics that make people tick. What makes people react in such different ways to events and opinions? In the case of National’s current contentious education policy, why are the two sides so adamant they are right? What’s driving the thought processes?

I think it’s best viewed in terms of some good old dichotomies. The traditional ones are left-wing and right-wing, economically wet or dry, socialist versus capitalist.

I interpret so much of human behaviour and reaction to events in terms of the type of spirit imbuing the people concerned. Often I see them as being fundamentally either generous-spirited or mean-spirited. In the same way, I assess people I interact with as negative or positive people, punitive or forgiving.

In relation to national standards, I think a similar polarity is in action. There are those who believe the best way to get improved performance, behaviour or whatever desired achievement out of anyone (employees, families, pupils) is to encourage, foster and work co-operatively with them. And on the other hand there are those who believe the best method to get results out of people is to point fingers, make them feel bad or inadequate, and trust that this will make them ‘pull up their socks’.

Those who naturally find themselves in the former group are characterised and labelled as “wishy washy liberals, touchy-feely, hand-wringing, angst-ridden (and, yes, tree-hugging often) soft touches” by those who subscribe to the latter view.

Anne Tolley and her (often) middle and upper class following are clearly in the “pull your socks up” brigade. Normally I would have thought that John Key was not, but sadly he has aligned himself with her on this issue, so in my opinion he has slipped a couple of respect pegs.

In this national standards debate, there is clearly a drive by the government and its followers to use name-and-shame as a threat to teachers, principals and schools to work harder (with the same resources) and toe the line. The threat indirectly carries through to the pupils as well. “We know lots of you are not achieving well enough; soon we’ll know exactly who you are so we can apply pressure for improvements through your teachers and schools.”

We can tell this by the fact that, as I’ve argued in my previous post, the government has no logical course of action planned for post-standards times. There’s very little extra money to actually do anything to help teachers lift their abilities, and no significant programmes in place to help kids identified as “failures” (or “non-achievers”).

It’s like the US’s preparation to invade Iraq – the plan and equipment was there to go in and throw their weight around, but then no idea how to manage the invaded country apart from defending themselves from the people they had violated.

Tolley and her supporters believe pointing the finger and exposing poor performance will do the trick and cause standards to lift as a result of compliant pupils wanting to avoid the shame. The other half of us are wired to believe that you best achieve the desired results by working co-operatively and with generosity of spirit and, above all, encouragement rather than shaming, to help our young people learn.

4 Comments | Education, Politics | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by David Armstrong

What’s really going on in the national education standards “debate”

January 29, 2010

Following my article a couple of days ago, I’m still struggling to figure out what’s going on in Education Minister Anne Tolley’s (or the government’s) mind. But I think I’m starting to see how this confrontation between the education sector and Tolley/Key took root and where it’s going.

As I wrote on Wednesday, I simply cannot reconcile the certainty with which Tolley speaks about the “one in five children that we know are failing” in numeracy and literacy, with her passionate insistence that we set up this potentially damaging and unproven system of standards in order to provide evidence that these children are failing.

On this morning’s radio I heard all this repeated by the School Trustees Association representative – that we know there are kids failing and how many, we know roughly who they are and what areas they come from, and we know a lot about their ethnicity.

What we don’t know, or have yet to articulate, is what we’ll do about the results when they come in. If we know about these failures – who they are and where they’re taught – then why are we not doing something about it now, such as strengthening teacher resources and training teachers to do a better job? Why are we throwing millions of precious dollars at a testing regime to tell us what we (or at least Tolley) already know? How will knowing that make for any improvements that we cannot implement already?

Yes, the logic has been escaping me. So I’ve been thinking back to how this came about, and how the policy drivers have morphed.

There are two possibilities, I believe. The first is that the government, and Tolley in particular, are stupid and pig-headed, determined to show who’s boss at all costs. Pig-headed? Certainly, no question – but what government isn’t on key policies. Stupid? I’m not prepared to call these seemingly intelligent leaders stupid just yet.

The more likely possibility arises from this scenario:

When electioneering back in 2008, the National party picked on pupil literacy and numeracy problems as a great issue to appeal to middle and upper class Kiwi voters. Like that other perennial easy hit, Law and Order, it was simple to express and it resonated with many parents. And (again like law and order and the implications on prison costs) it didn’t lend itself during election time to much in-depth analysis thinking about the implications of setting national standards, especially among people who don’t understand much about education issues and the problems real teachers face day to day.

National won the election. So the new Education Minister, who had extolled her policy initiative pre-election, had to follow through. And it was then that the people who actually understand the educational process began to suggest that things were not quite so straightforward.

So Tolley faced expert, in-depth analysis and criticism that simply testing children does not necessarily make them any better off, and that – worse – it may well do harm to the education of individual children and the country as a whole. Issues such as teaching to the test, labelling slower kids as perennial failures, and publishable school league tables were brought into the open. The paucity of sound argument by Tolley and her supporters also came to light as we learn that she has no plan whatsoever as to how to use the results to improve education.

Except for one thing. And I’ve realised that this is the underlying motivation that keeps supporters of standards testing rolling.

Tolley is hoping that the publication of results will enable the naming and shaming of teachers and schools, so that they will feel compelled to “improve” their work efforts so their pupils will “pass the tests”.

There isn’t enough money, it seems, to invest more in teacher training and upskilling and in better classroom resources and smaller classes. These are the logical, proven ways of lifting standards throughout the country. So if we’re not prepared to take that path, then the next best way is to use sticks rather than carrots – make the “failing” teachers and schools known to us all, in order to make them feel bad and try harder.

This negative approach may work with a small minority of lazier teacher – just as it would with small minorities of lazier workers everywhere, even politicians – but it does nothing to positively motivate teachers and lift morale, which surely is the best long-term way of lifting educational standard overall.

This policy battle between certain politicians and educational experts and fieldworkers is really, then, a combination of a minister’s determination not to lose face plus a mean-spirited, negative attitude to ordinary educational workers who are trying to do their best with the resources available to them.

10 Comments | Education, Politics | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by David Armstrong

Education Minister Tolley can’t escape her own faulty logic loop

January 27, 2010

Education Minister Anne Tolley continues to paint herself into a corner over the government’s National Literacy Standards policy.

I heard her interviewed on the radio this morning, following the announcement that she has lost the tertiary education portfolio – purportedly so she can put all her efforts into forcing through the Standards policy. I was flinching with embarrassment as she spoke (one could easily imagine it was through gritted teeth), doggedly raising the same old arguments we’ve heard over and over for the past several months. (I wrote on this topic last year on this page)

It’s hard not to be convinced that the stripping of her second portfolio in order to concentrate on one policy is anything but a demotion. The one plus that she can take from this is that, curiously, John Key is still backing her policy. (Everyone else is ducking for cover.)

Those same old arguments – I’m getting really sick of them. Every time it goes something like this.

Question: Why introduce national standards?

Tolley: We know have 150,000 kids who are underachieving. We have to do something to address that.

Q: What are you proposing should be done?

T: We need to show what they’re supposed to be achieving, and we need to test them to see who’s not achieving.

Q: How will that help the 150,000 underachievers?

T: It will show them what they should be capable of so they can be considered achievers.

Q: How will testing them make them achieve any better?

T: Look, there are 150,000 underachievers and we must do something to change this national shame and waste.

Q: But we already have standards testing in most schools. What will this add?

T: National standards will tell parents and children what they need to be achieving, what are acceptable achievements in numeracy and literacy.

Q: Anyhow, how do we know there are 150,000 underachievers?

T: We’ve asked the schools who have tested and that’s what we’ve found.

Q: So how will doing the tests again achieve anything? If we already know there are that many not achieving, how will testing them again and again solve anything.

T: Look, National got into government promising to do something to address the problem of 150,000 underachievers so here, we’re doing something.

And round …. and round …. and round again, the same old “logic”. Does she think we’re all simple-minded, or does she hope there are enough idiots among us to not see the lack of any common sense here?

As for her other major weapon to handle reporters: that huge numbers of teachers agree with her but it’s only the unions that are standing in her way – this proves to me that she simply is no longer listening and just wants to fight to the end to show who’s boss.

Anne Tolley has painted herself (and John Key in the process) into a corner and cannot now escape without creating an even bigger mess. How this will resolve I have no idea, but I see very little chance of no-one being hurt in the process.

3 Comments | Education, Politics | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by David Armstrong

Unpleasant sub-text to the national education standards “debate”

November 26, 2009

I wrote back a few months ago about my concerns that the so-called debate over national education literacy and numeracy standards shows an underlying meanness of spirit. As the date for the forced implementation gets closer I see it getting worse rather than better.

I say “so-called” debate because Prime Minister John Key and Education Minister Anne Tolley are no longer listening to opposing arguments. Their standard answer now to any attempts at ongoing debate seems to be: “They’re saying nothing new”. We’re now in ‘final decision has been made, get over it’ mode.

What disturbs me most now, even more so than before, is their condescending defence that the very few people against national standards are teachers, unions and academics. And their purported reasons are, for teachers, that they and their unions have a vested interest and are afraid of accountability; and, for academics, well …. they don’t live in the real world.

This belittling of experts in the education field has rightly opened a rift between the government and those working at the blackboard. Such a rift is emphatically not good for the country or for our next generation. Making skilled professionals (for the most part, they are) feel unworthy to speak from experience and training is hardly going to lift standards, is it?

Recently I discussed this issue with an acquaintance who’s a highly qualified and long-serving electrician. He was taking the same line as Key – that as a parent he knows as much as (or even more than) his kids’ teachers about how schools should be run and what policies are best for his child. Teachers, he believed, were just trying to protect their patch.

We then turned that particular viewpoint around and looked at it from the other side. What would he think, I asked, if the government decided that domestic electrical installation standards were changed so that any homeowner could wire and rewire his own house without the need for a sparky? Wouldn’t that cut down on the amount of work he’d get?

Sure, less work, he said. But far worse would be the reduction in quality of homes if amateurs did the work. Would he object? You bet! But you have a vested interest. Perhaps, but that’s not the point – there’s pride in your work to consider. If the government didn’t listen but just kept on insisting that they and other ordinary people knew better than electricians? Insulting!

Another thought: What if before an electrician started a rewiring job he had to fill out reams of paperwork about standards that were clearly irrelevant to that particular job, and then afterward have an inspection team from the national standards board come in, check it, and publish all the results in the local paper?

By this stage, he was starting to see why it was better to trust true professionals (including teachers) to get on with their jobs within basic legal frameworks.

Like it or not, most teachers do know lots about what’s best for the education of our children, what won’t work and why. They have the training and the experience. Just like most electricians know how to most safely and efficiently wire a house, without the need to have their work constantly tested and fill in all the associated paperwork. And most police and firemen know best how to deal with dangerous situations and people. I could go on.

I repeat: belittling teachers (or any group with real expertise in their field) and attributing their concerns purely to self-interest does nothing to improve standards in this country, and in fact risks educational quality.

I know many, many non-teachers who are firmly against this national standards policy. It’s NOT just a clique of self-interested teachers who know no more than us amateurs. They are convinced by evidence as well as common sense that building an education system around publicly-scored standards is just too limiting in today’s evolving society.

To restate the reasons I and so many others are against this policy:

1. No matter how we try to prevent or downplay it, newspapers make lots of money out of publishing league tables – how schools rank against each other. And no matter how hard their better reporters try to explain how those league tables fail to tell the whole picture, their headline writers will never miss the chance to signal that some school somewhere is falling short. And, sadly, their readers find it so hard to see both sides of any such “school failing” story.

2. No matter how hard teachers try to lift their pupils up to standards, there are some (too many) whose earlier life experiences mean they may never reach “pass” state for their age on a national scale. To tell those children, year after year, that they’ve failed is hardly conducive to raising well-adjusted and happy contributors to community life.

3. Telling the world which children are failing doesn’t in itself achieve anything. Teachers already know, by and large, which kids are in trouble and most will do what they can, given the resources available to them, to make improvements. To make significant improvements in many cases requires huge extra resources, which our government is hardly going to fund sufficiently in today’s fiscal climate.  Instead, they will merely try to shame teachers into trying harder.

Naming and shaming those pupils and teachers may make a few lazy teachers sit up and try harder, but most are already doing what they can; shaming them will more likely make them more defensive.  Providing better resources to help them in their teaching techniques, and giving them smaller classes and more peer support, will achieve heaps more.

4. I agree with the sentiment that teaching in today’s world should be more about individual learning experiences for individual children, rather than a heavy focus on the three Rs. National standards and publicly notified results will inevitably lead to less diversity in learning experiences.

5. By all accounts – and I see no reason to question them – most teachers already tell parents everything that they want and need to know about their Johnny’s progress in core subjects. Contrary to what Tolley and Key keep contending, there is no conspiracy for teachers to hide information from parents – just as my electrician friend never tries to withhold technical information from his customers about a house he’s rewired.

2 Comments | Education, Politics | Tagged: , | Permalink
Posted by David Armstrong

Not only teachers are against national standards

July 20, 2009

I may be wrong but . . . . I get a feeling that supporters of government moves to introduce literacy and numeracy standards in all primary schools have adopted the mean-spirited strategy of pointing to teachers, with their presumed vested interest, as the main opponents of the policy.

I was a secondary school teacher for 5 years back around 1970 and that experience, which I found was way too hard for a person of my temperament and constitution, has imprinted in my psyche the conviction that teachers do an important job, that it is not easy work, and that the majority of teachers are professional and have pupils’ interests as a leading priority. (But I would acknowledge, again from personal experience, that as with any profession, a small minority of teachers are less altruistic in their motives.)

Over the years I’ve heard teachers slagged regularly, almost always by people who have never tried it. The holidays, the teacher-only days, the short official working day, the lack of interest shown by their Charlie’s teacher in their son’s academic endeavours, etc. Sometimes I just let it pass, other times I suggest the critic try the work themselves.

I well remember the boss in one of my later places of employment, a long-time bachelor, business man and occasional morning-tea critic of teachers, who late in his working life married a woman who was a good teacher. It was astonishing (and gratifying) to hear his tearoom conversations turn 180 degrees after he realised, presumably from seeing how hard his new wife worked, how tough teachers had it and how dedicated they were.

It is with some annoyance and concern that I’ve heard several times in the past few weeks prominent opponents of the government’s new “national standards” policy (and particularly of the intention within it to make the results public and therefore used for league table rankings of schools) saying that the main opponents are teachers who have a closed shop mentality and don’t want their work to be open to view or “accountable”.

The National-led government clearly has decided this is the easiest tactic in getting the voting public onside. I’ve heard both the PM and the Education Minister saying that they won’t be swayed by the teachers unions and academic educationalists. And the right-wing commentator Matthew Hooten, who normally I credit with considerable intelligence, went ballistic on Kathryn Ryan’s radio programme a few weeks ago, trying to convince listeners that teachers are trying to run a Soviet-style education system and are afraid to open their work to public gaze. Did you forget your medication that morning, Matthew?

I know many, many non-teachers who are firmly against this policy. It’s NOT just a clique of self-interested teachers. They are convinced by evidence as well as common sense that building an education system around publicly-scored standards is just too limiting in today’s evolving society.

1 Comment | Education, Politics | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by David Armstrong

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