National standards are all about producing league tables. Never mind that league tables are a terrible idea, the data that the tables are based on are (still) nonsense. From RNZ this morning:
National standards results ‘lack dependability’
The latest in a series commissioned by the Education Ministry said teachers’ judgements of how well children were performing against the standards still lacked dependability.
The National Standards School Sample Monitoring and Evaluation Project has been running since 2010, and the latest report covered 15,838 children at 100 schools in 2013.
The study compared the maths judgements of teachers at 39 of the schools with those made for the same students using a computer-based system being developed to help teachers make more accurate national standards’ decisions.
It found 60 percent of the teachers’ judgements differed from those reached using the Progress and Consistency Tool; 40 percent of the teachers’ judgements were higher and 20 percent lower.
The teachers had decided 352 children were at the maths standard for their age, but the tool suggested only 28 percent of those children deserved that rating.
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The report said between 30 and 40 percent of children got different results from year to year, and intermediate schools were less likely to rate Year 7 and 8 children at or above the standards than primary schools.
…
The previous report in the series, published in 2013, also said teachers’ judgements lacked dependability.
Nothing has changed from 2012 then.
So we have ongoing pressures to narrow the curriculum from both national standards and funding cuts. And we have league tables which are both unreliable and damaging. Great work Nats, great work.
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