|
| |||||
|
According
to new research from Education International, there is little or no
evidence
that performance testing all students on a national basis improves educational
quality.
"There are strong indications that such experiments have an adverse
impact in terms of eq-uity," says senior EI consultant Bob Harris
in his report, Why ranking schools would do more harm than good, recently
presented to the AEU federal executive.
Harris examined national performance testing in countries including
England, the United States, Poland and Norway. He found that performance
testing of all students at given age levels is highly disruptive, distorts
the teaching of a broad curriculum, and adversely influences re-source
allocation and equitable school admission policies.
His research showed that the process for arriving at performance testing
and ranking of schools into league tables was driven by political agendas.
"[It's done] with an eye more to me-dia impact than to the educational
interests of children and young people," he says.
He also found confusion between established systems for evaluation and
assessment, and new regimes of performance testing. Politics-and the
motivation of political gain-has also been behind the misuse and misrepresentation
of test results, says Harris (see box).
Harris says the debate in many countries is often based on loose assumptions
such as that cen-sus testing will provide more valuable information
about system performance than indicators such as random sampling. "There
is no evidence to support this."
Public accountability
In Australia, the AEU has long been a vocal critic of the strategy of
publishing school literacy and numeracy scores as it threatens to undermine
curriculum delivery and student learning.
League tables are demoralising to teachers, parents and students and
are woefully incom-plete-and therefore misleading-sources of information
about school perform-ance, says Byrne. "They also undermine school
improve-ment efforts by redirecting teacher focus to ensur-ing students
pass tests."
The union has been lobbying for an alternative to the current system.
It believes that public accountability can be served by reporting sample
rather than census-based aggregated school data which does not identify
individual schools. Not the answer
National standardised testing may be popular for producing a simple
set of measures, but it's not the answer to everything. In fact, there
is growing consensus from educators around the world that a focus on
census testing leads to 'teaching to the test', a narrowing of the curriculum
to concentrate on what is tested and 'unprofessional treatment' of teachers
through the increased use of direct instruction methods, says Byrne.
"The highest-achieving countries within the OECD-in terms of both
excellence and qual-ity-have systems which are not characterised by
this form of public 'accountability'," says Byrne.
As Professor Allan Luke told Australian Educator (Winter 2007), countries
that have gone down the path of 'high stakes' assessment-such as the
US and UK-begin to constrain profes-sional versatility. "[And]
the results are highly problematic," he says. By contrast, schools
in countries that use 'low stakes' assessment-such as Finland-can opt
into a testing system if they wish to be bench-marked. Finland has a
very high literacy rate, notes Luke. And it's not a coincidence.
"It is clear and uncontroversial that parents are entitled to and
should be provided with timely, meaningful information about their children's
progress at school, including on a comparative ba-sis against state-wide
benchmarks, in critical areas of their education," said the AEU
in its initial statement in response to the federal govern-ment's Schools
Assistance (Learning Together-Achievement Through Choice and Opportunity)
Act 2004, which made this type of testing a condition of Common-wealth/State
funding arrangements.
"What is not so clear and uncontroversial is whether mass standardised
testing is the appro-priate means of obtaining the best quality information
for school systems about the effectiveness of programs, resource allocations
and policies, and for parents and teachers on student achieve-ment."
With standardised national census-style testing-already introduced at
years 3, 5, and 7-being mooted for years 9 and 12, the union is also
concerned that teacher professionalism and the strong reporting relationship
between teachers and parents will be further undermined. But Aus-tralia's
position may become increasingly solitary.
Back in the global picture, the EI's Bob Harris says indications in
other countries are that the use of census testing and league tables
is in decline. "If Australia continues to pursue it, it will be
at the wrong end of the swing of the pendulum."
In his report, Why ranking schools would do more harm than good,
Education International sen-ior consultant Bob Harris contrasts
the census method with the Program of International Student Assessment-and
he finds it wanting.
"PISA is for comparing national performance [in 67 countries]
using as an indicator the re-sults of tests from a random sample
of 15-year-olds in each country on literacy, numeracy, scien-tific
awareness and capacity to solve problems. PISA results attract
front-page attention in many countries. We think PISA has helped
to provide some useful data showing that good education policies,
as in Finland, can achieve both quality and equity.
"PISA is based on sampling and indicators-not on census testing."
Even then, the test results can be misused and misrepresented
for political gain. In one PISA assessment, Japan came in one
place ahead of South Korea. In
the next assessment, it was one place behind South Korea, and
a major Japanese newspaper headlined its resulting story
'Crisis in education'.
"The phrase came from Japan's minister of education who then
used the result as a stick to beat the teachers' union,"
says Harris in an interview with Australian Educator from his
office in Switzerland. "We are trying to prepare our people
at EI before the next PISA report comes out in December so they
can try to counter this kind of response."
In his report, Harris says the simplistic reporting of testing
and ranking is an unsatisfactory substitute for serious community-wide
debate about education, including what parents expect of their
schools.
"Achieving the goals of quality and equity in education for
all Australian children and young people will take hard work,
widespread consultation, partnership between educators and their
communities, agreements on effective instruments for monitoring
and accountability, and re-sources. Short cuts will be self-defeating
and counter-productive."
At Educational Assessment Australia, at the University of NSW,
director Dr Peter Knapp says using the same tests nationally "levels
the playing field", which is preferable to the previous sys-tem
of trying to compare benchmark performance across seven state
and territory testing pro-grams.
However, he agrees that making the data public can be counterproductive.
"I'm not arguing that governments shouldn't be able to monitor
student growth and performance through sam-pling the national
results, but it would make the tests a more empowering instrument
for schools if they had ownership of their assessment data.
"We know from what has happened with national testing in
England that publishing league tables from unsophisticated assessment
instruments is highly problematic."
EAA markets a national testing program, ICAS, around the world.
Knapp says one of its strengths is that schools own their own
data and are able to choose who shares in that data.
He also notes that the national census testing represents a significant
public investment just to come up with a set of minimum benchmark
data. "We'd conservatively put the price at $50 a student,
and there are about 1.2 million students to be tested."
"Why not make it work for everyone instead of just focusing
on low achievement so that funding vouchers can be handed out
to parents? Make it useful for finding the strengths and weaknesses
for average and high-performing students as well."
In January last year The West Australian newspaper used
its testing data to compile and publish the results for every
government school in WA. The West Australian branch of the AEU
was horrified, and has since maintained a directive that members
refuse to implement the tests. "The WA Education Department
says it's bound by the federal Act," says branch coordinator
and project officer Mary Franklyn. "We've been fighting it in
the WA Industrial Relations Commission, which has sent us off
to do more talking with the department."
"As teachers, we're asked to honour children's personal development
and learning styles, and move them along at their own pace using
outcome statements. Then we're told that everyone in Year 5 has
to be at the same place or standard in the testing regime regardless
of their journey."
STEVE PACKER is a freelance writer.
|
|| About || Campaigns || Debates || Early Childhood || Environment Action || Feedback || FEUIC || Human Rights || Indigenous Education ||
|| Industrial || International Development || Join || Media || Policy || Principals || Publications || Search || TAFE || What's New || Women ||
Copyright
© 2012 Australian Education Union
- Federal Office
120 Clarendon Street, Southbank, Victoria, Australia 3006
Ph: +61 3 9693 1800 Fax: +61 3 9693 1805
Email: aeu@aeufederal.org.au