School Lines Hey, Stupid, it’s raising achievement, achievement, achievement! No, Stupid, it’s making progress, progress, progress! Lester Flockton
lester.flockton@otago.ac.nz
As I write this article, New Zealanders are awaiting a decision on which political parties will form the next Government. For those of us with a vested interest in education policies, we will each have our own high hopes, depending on what we believe to be good, right and proper. But we certainly won’t all share the same position in this regard. Some will undoubtedly relish the idea of National Standards ‘Plus’ because it offers new fantasies, new opportunities to cash in on the inevitable development contracts, consultancy packages, or another chance to be heroically seen and heard as the FIRST on the rank! For others, it would simply be yet another ill-conceived, ill-considered, ill-founded, ill-informed and unilaterally imposed load plonked on the backs of schools that are already groaning under the weight of externally driven intrusions and nonsensicalities. Intrusions that are too often based on political illusions waged to catch the votes of the gullible who have been duped into believing that data and data devices are the great new age educational panacea. Ah, but we’re told by political education spokespeople that it’s no longer about the same old data of the kind that currently riddles the National Standards regime. That is, data that reports ‘achievement’. No, it’s tracking progress that matters now, not achievement, so new policies are wont to make the switch. A National Party website heralds the new buzz: Making it even easier to track your child’s progress We will revamp National Standards so children, parents and teachers can track their progress throughout the year in key learning areas. A National Government will invest $45 million to revamp National Standards so children, parents and teachers can track their progress throughout the year in key learning areas. “National Standards has been hugely successful in keeping parents informed about how their kids are doing at school, but we can do more to ensure they are better able to participate in their child’s learning,” Education spokesperson Nikki Kaye says. https://www.national.org.nz/making_it_even_easier_to_track_ your_child_s_progress
This National Standards ‘Plus’, which sounds like a new kind of swipe card baked up in a pizza kitchen by a political accountant, raises some very big questions around matters such as progress throughout the year (daily? weekly? monthly? termly?), in key learning areas (all seven of them?), by investing spending $45 million to revamp National Standards (or is it a re-vamp and
mandating of PaCT?), and doing more (who’s going to be doing more – and more, and more?). But it’s not only National Party politicians who are now reciting a litany of ‘progress’. Labour is also to the forefront, as was well demonstrated during a question and answer programme hosted by TVNZ. Chris Hipkins: We want parents to have better information about how their kids are doing. National Standards are not national; they’re not standard; they don’t measure progress, and they’ve been found by the Ministry of Education’s own research to be a very bad measure of how well students are progressing. The Ministry of Education did research on this and found that four out of 10 National Standards results are not measuring the child’s progress accurately. Interviewer: But parents do find them very useful, don’t they? Because they identify very clearly when somebody is not meeting a standard, and therefore there is a problem. That is useful, isn’t it? Chris Hipkins: Well, no, because they’re not measuring progress . . . Q+A Education Debate, Sunday 3 September, 2017, TVNZ
Now this progress thing at a government policy level is very interesting, especially considering that one of the most vocal and persistent advocates for switching emphasis has been Dr John Hattie, a man to whom successive politicians have been submissively endeared, and a man who is not averse to persuading the direction of public policy. In his website, Visible Learning Plus (note!), he demonstrates a tool for comparing metrics of achievement and progress, although he sometimes prefers to split semantic hairs by referring to progress as ‘growth’, as shown in the following transcript of his YouTube talk. Most, however, would understandably take growth to mean progress. So often we’ve been obsessed with high achievement. There’s nothing wrong with that, but sometimes it does confuse a tremendous amount of what we do in schools and that we think we need to have all kids above some kind of average. Well, firstly, it’s not going to happen . . . The second thing is that every kid, no matter where they start, even the kids above average, deserve a year’s growth . . . I want kids, no matter where they start, to get that year’s growth. John Hattie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=021nSlhhrj8
Well, dear John can be assured that his ‘want’ for annual yearly progress (AYP) is pretty much the norm. Even the child who is below the standard at one year level, then below the standard again a year later at the next year level, has made a year’s progress
from one year level to the next, albeit he or she is still ‘below’. But, of course, this is to grossly simplify the more complex nature of progress. A few years ago, the Ministry of Education set up a working group to propose directions for assessment in New Zealand. In their report, they stated: We advocate the development of rich descriptions of progress over time (progressions) and clearly defined indicators of achievement relative to different stages of learning (levels). They further noted that there are few good examples of progressions that are useful to teachers: Given the shortage of good examples of progressions (whether local or international), exactly what making progress means for different areas of the curriculum needs to be determined through research and the professional deliberations of teachers and school leaders. Absolum, M, Flockton, L, Hattie, J, Hipkins, R, and Reid.I. (2009). Directions for Assessment in New Zealand, Ministry of Education.
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Clearly, that has not so far happened, and moreover it would be fizzy-headed to think that the National Standards literacy and numeracy progressions have proved to be well-conceived and sensible. Arguably they’re not! So let’s get this right. Progress and achievement belong together. They are inseparable. You cannot gauge progress without gauging achievement, and gauging achievement is always relative to particular criteria. In turn, criteria of any worth
need to be incrementally descriptive of progressions in learning that make clear, unambiguous distinctions from one point in time to another. Moreover, they need to be able to be consistently and readily understood and interpreted by one and all. Why, then, all of this mouthing about ‘progress’? It’s far from being a new idea. Way back in the last century when I was teaching, we had an assessment ‘tool’ called the P & A (Progress and Achievement) Register. In Part 1 of the register, the teacher was required to twice-yearly make overall judgments (OTJs) on a 5-point scale of their students’ achievements in all of the curriculum areas. The 5-point scale was: well below, below, at, above, and well above, and the distribution of achievement ratings was expected to conform to the bell curve, or the ‘normal curve of distribution’ – a hypothetical statistical model which nonetheless resonates pretty well with reality, whether it be the vege garden, wine or the human race. In Part 2 of the register, the teacher was required to note the progress being made by the child during the year. Furthermore, twice-yearly reports to parents in those days typically had columns for teacher ratings of both achievement and progress in each subject. And so, the wheels of the bus go round and round, round and round, all – day – long. But if there was someone out there with the capability, commitment and willingness to apply the brakes, then that would be a real ‘Plus’!
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