So, schools may face "consequences" for refusing to implement National Standards?
Considering the complete failure of the government to ensure any accuracy and consistency in assessment of students relative to these standards across the country (and the sudden release of "data" that is unmoderated, self-reported and hugely inconsistent), it seems like it would be much safer to stay out of the melee until the kinks were worked out.
But now, Hekia Parata has brought up the issue of performance pay for teachers being linked to their students' achievement (based against National Standards) and possible "rating" of teachers.
How is this even... what could... why would... oh god.
While making some huge but necessary generalisations in the process, let's look at some of the issues facing students at high and low decile schools, first of all:
Decile 1 - huge proportion of ESOL students, mostly from poor families.
Decile 10 - some ESOL students, mostly from wealthy families.
Decile 1 - many students come from homes with close to zero books or educational toys, may come to school with limited counting skills, not knowing the alphabet or which way a book is held, and unable to hold pencils or crayons purposefully. Their parents may speak and read limited English so do not read with or to their children (the Tupu series aside, there are comparatively few books published here in Pasifika languages, for example).
Decile 10 - most students come from homes crammed with books and educational toys, may enter school reading basic words, doing simple addition and subtraction, and able to write their name. Their parents read with and to them, often daily.
Decile 1 - many students have had no preschool, kindy, playschool or other ECE experience.
Decile 10 - most students have had considerable preschool, kindy, playschool or other ECE experience.
Decile 1 - many students come to school hungry and are malnourished, with substandard or unhealthy lunches.
Decile 10 - most students are well fed every day.
Decile 1 - many students are from a community with huge social issues including drug and alcohol abuse, overcrowding, unemployment, high crime rates, and general dysfunction.
Decile 10 - most students are from a community with far fewer pressing social issues prevalent.
Decile 1 - many students have no computer or internet access at home to assist their learning.
Decile 10 - almost all students have computer and internet access at home to assist their learning.
I mean, this stuff is all basic, and is such a limited overview, but they are real and serious factors affecting students' learning and teachers' teaching.
A quick but light-shedding story: this year I had one student who, as well as being a "P baby," had unmedicated ADHD and epilepsy, and English was her third language. She had constant itchy eczema which drove her crazy, and big asthma attacks every day. She worked hard, and so did I, and she made excellent progress, shifting her reading age from 7 years 0 months at the start of the year to 9 years 5 months (she was 10 years and 5 months old) by term 3. However, her irregular attendance, her chaotic home life (15 people in a 3-bedroom house, sleeping on a couch in a garage she shared with her drug-dealing, jail-frequenting parents, well-known to CYFS), and her health problems combined to provide a huge barrier to her learning, whatever I did in class. She is "just below" in the National Standards for reading, writing and maths. Not bad. Not good enough, never good enough, but I challenge you to do better with her in these circumstances. There were lots of kids in similar situations to hers in the rest of the class and in the rest of the school.
Obviously, teachers in low decile schools are automatically on the back foot. Generally speaking, they have fewer resources, many more behavioural problem kids, many more students with learning disabilities, and many more students who have been uplifted by CYFS and/or experienced major traumas in their personal lives (I had one girl who had watched her whole extended family get murdered in a UN refugee camp two years earlier).
Those whose first language isn't English are further challenged by the delivery of the New Zealand curriculum, and the teachers must (and do) teach them well, too. It is an indicator of the excellence of our teachers that most students in low decile schools do achieve at similar rates to their more affluent peers, eventually.
However, the progress of one student simply is not comparable to the progress of their peers across the country.
What do we get next?
Instead of "newsflash: poor kids do worse at school" it seems we are about to hear "newsflash: National standards data shows teachers at low decile schools get worse results and will subsequently be paid less to incentivise good teaching."
The old carrot. The old stick. These useless teachers. Punish the pricks til they do as they're goddamn told!
A widespread progress measurement tool with genuine standardised moderated assessment practices may, in the future, be a better indicator of teachers' results and students' learning than this National Standards junk, but this government is reluctant to put much funding into real, evidence-based, well-planned practice.
Instead, they push ahead, beating their drums louder and faster, drowning out the people who say this is wrong, to stage a crisis with this National Standards data, this inelegant thing, this disgrace to proper-thinking people.
We are left shaking our heads, teachers leaving in droves, and kids who so desperately need good teaching being left further behind by progress than ever.
