School Lines Sceptical, Cynical, Critically Analytical, or Naïve? Lester Flockton
feedback, feedforward, Feedup, feeddown lester.flockton@otago.ac.nz
In the education environment, to be Sceptical is to to be spent refreshing the Avon in Christchurch this year), to have doubts or reservations about claims of likely benefits or the naïve it nonetheless seems like a silver-wrapped, chocolate outcomes of Government policy and strategy. To be cynical is flavoured manna from heaven. But once the chocolate coating is to be distrustful or contemptuous of the motives and intentions licked away, what we actually find are more of the same old bland, of those who decree policies and manufacture strategies. To flavourless, and educationally unwholesome ingredients baked be critically analytical is to base judgments of policies and in the policy kitchen to the tediously repetitious and formulaic practice on a thorough and properly balanced examination of recipe of National Standards plus Better Teaching equaling Higher evidence, experience and conjecture. Achievement to the power of national In effect, there is not much that We’ve yet to find prosperity (on the packet labeled thus: separates scepticism, cynicism, and NS + BT = HAnp). convincing ‘evidence’ Unfortunately, too many only look to critical analysis when it comes to the chocolate, and don’t bother to get a responses to the current neo-liberal of system-wide sustainable consumer validation on the claims spun (free market, profiteering, competitive, around the packaging or what lurks capitalist) direction of education gains in achievement beneath the chocolate coating. This policy in our country. In this context, propensity has chronic histrionics that those committed to social justice and commensurate to the are predictably mitigated by equally cultural virtue are motivated towards largesse poured into this chronic amnesia. Do you remember, all three responses. To be naïve is to lack for example, those ‘SAPs’ (Student wisdom, insightfulness, experience, and policy practice. Achievement Practitioners) who were good judgment. Naivety can amount going to show the indolent, unskilled to blissful ignorance or denial, and is arguably the feeblest level of professional thought (that is, well and lacklustre how to accelerate achievement by pouring their superior data-rich, ‘sure to rise’ expertise on kids who might below the standard expected). The latest Government policy panacea for schools, along otherwise be okay if it wasn’t for their life circumstances? Those with the inevitable operational package, is not excluded from SAPs got lots of chocolate bars while the rest had to be content the response categories outlined above. It is something of a with water biscuits – yet, somehow the chocolate delights turned populist ploy characteristic of election year enticements. In to lumpy custard! We’ve yet to find convincing ‘evidence’ of this case, it’s dollops of money for super principals and super system-wide sustainable gains in achievement commensurate to teachers whose job will be to spawn other super principals and the largesse poured into this policy practice. Silver bullets were super teachers. While the per annum fiscal spend for all of this yet again shown to be sugary figments of policy fantasies that is really chicken feed in the scale of things (about the same is care little for the substantive realities of pedagogy.
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We are told ad nauseam that the ‘evidence’ (predictably Best Evidence Synthesis, and Hattie’s research) says teachers are the single-most important influence on student achievement (beware of assumptions about what counts as achievement and how it is measured) – and there the sentence typically ends. That’s it! Teachers are both cause and effect. The fine print is brushed aside because it is not convenient to populist policy. Thus teachers, and teachers alone, make or break achievement and should therefore be the most accountable for student performance. Those whose students do well should be rewarded with chocolate bars, and those whose students are not performing to the ‘standards’ should be under visitation from those who feast on chocolate bars. Moreover, some of their principals will also feast on chocolate bars and will grace themselves and their superiority on those principals who have not yet earned enough data points let alone having loyalty cards for such gastronomic delights (that is, delights full of gas). But that is not how it really is. There are reams of highly reputable very (note) best evidence making it irrefutably clear that teachers are not the main variable or contributor in student achievement. At most, they typically have somewhere between 20 to 30 per cent impact. Enough has been said of this in my previous columns, and respected academics, researchers, and practitioners who know their stuff are continually saying it with a depth and breadth of evidence that makes the BES look rather incomplete. But this is not convenient to political policy spin. I have always thought the idea of paying some teachers more so that they might stay in the classroom rather than scale the ladder to principalship to be somewhat poorly conceived and full of potentially nasty fishhooks. It assumes teachers are there first and foremost for the money. And anyway, would we agree that all principals appointed by school boards nowadays have proven track records for being great teachers and educators. Or, if they did, perhaps they have been willing to compromise a rich, balanced and well-rounded curriculum for children by bowing to the duo-theistic curricular gods and gospels of literacy and numeracy along with copious data tithing. Since the Government has got some money to throw around, it would have been more enlightened to invest in the reestablishment of strong, resourceful, accessible and untainted advisory services throughout New Zealand that include science, social sciences, art, music, physical education, and school leadership, or to extend funding for within school supplementary salary units. But that is not what this is all about. It’s about improving teaching to raise national standards achievement so that five out of five are at or above. Despite the best of intentions, most of us know this will never work unless, of course, the bar for “at” is dropped to “well below”. In her response to the Government’s election year chocolatecoated carrots to be fed to a minority of teachers and principals, leadership academic Viviane Robinson told the New Zealand Herald (24.01.14) that “we know from numerous experiments in school clusters that putting school leaders together to develop a shared improvement agenda can be a colossal waste of time and money.” She further commented, “we have nearly 25 years of experienced principals, in the form of commissioners, going into schools which have been identified by ERO as failing some respect. Yet despite that, many such schools are still at risk.” If we look at experiences with similar policies in other jurisdictions they invariably come out stamped “failed”. Failed, that is, in raising performance data on mandated standards. So we keep
asking, are our control politicians incapable of listening, learning, or being prepared to think outside their own ideological dogma? But we know the answer to that question. Mr Hughes, the latest secretary of education, has been making a valiant bid to heal the rift between the sector and the Ministry (a deep rift that also extends to his boss). He is saying things that are soothing to the ears, and promising to build relations by dealing to those Ministry people who have been taking it upon themselves to impose their will and misplaced authority on schools. Principals, he says, are the true sector leaders. The Ministry’s role is “custodianship” (whatever that might mean). However, when reminded that in reality he is inescapably the arm and hand of the Minister, an arm and hand not well revered and frequently injurious to good relationships, he responded by saying that the Ministry is politically neutral. Its role is “value free” and based on “data, knowledge and evidence”. And there the cracks appear! We know that no data, no knowledge, and no evidence are ever completely value free. The data, knowledge, and evidence sought and generated by the system represents what the system values, what the system thinks, and what the system wants. That said, Mr Hughes accepted that recipients of his messages might well be Sceptical, but asked that they not be cynical! Sadly, we live in times when those who take the time to have a good hard look behind the curtains of the Government’s stage show, do the critical analysis of the script and the backdrops, then expose the truth of the matter, end up being labeled cynics. The intention is clear. Dismiss them as negative, destructive, irrelevant and ill informed. This is a perverse irony considering that the motive of such critical analysis is honourable and positive. It is to supplant nonsense and dogma with truth, fairness, good sense and relentless advocacy for a rich, rounded, and balanced education for our young people. To conclude, I was saddened to learn of the passing earlier this year of distinguished teacher, thinker, researcher, and writer Elliot Eisner of Stanford University. Elliot’s vision for the education of our children seems miles apart from the mantras of the day. His is a truly positive force that we would all do well to have the courage to keep alive in policy and practice. We would like our children to be well informed – that is, to understand ideas that are important, useful, beautiful, and powerful. And we also want them to have the appetite and ability to ask questions, to think analytically and critically, to be able to speculate and imagine, to see connections among ideas, and to be able to use what they know to enhance their own lives and to contribute to their culture.