The effects of standardised testing

I've been critical of the outcomes of standardised testing and its effects on teaching. I was reading the following and seeing some of my predictions come true in the US, home of the standardised test and the no child left behind program. We have only a limited time to reverse direction before we repeat the mistakes of others. I'm sure more articles like this will start to appear.

http://www.educationcrossing.com/article/470176/Is-It-Time-For-Teacher-Free-Agency/

No effective public school system will leave whole generations behind.

(I've rewritten this twice and can't seem to get rid of the double meaning. One meaning is that an effective public school system will prevent generations being left behind, the second meaning is that without a public school system generations will be left behind. It's interesting that they are similar in effect, but the second meaning implies that a loss of the public school system will result in a negative consequence - which was the intent of the sentence - I wonder how people read it!)

The power of encouragement

Regular readers will know I take inspiration from my 2 year old daughter. Yesterday, we were at the playground and she ran herself silly but was afraid of the slide. To be honest, it was high and a bit fast for her but I figured she went on a roller coaster, why not a slide.

The first time, I held her hand and let go half way down. We yelled whhheeee and clapped when she reached the bottom. Needless to say she was soon going down on her own and started attempting other things that were previously impossible like the climbing frame and firemans drop..

How many times have we, as teachers, faced students that refused to try because it was too hard. Maybe this is a wakeup call to provide more encouragement first, scaffold a little more initially and then let go for a while whilst watching and enjoying their progress.

Leadership breeds competition

Staff in an education environment have little reason to be competitive. There is little opportunity for advancement, extra work brings no monetary reward or toil and the more done, the more is expected.

There is a form of anti competition. Those that do succeed are compared to other successes and compared using the strengths of each. The perceived lesser of the two is denigrated and the greater of them is tall poppied.

I call teaching the pirahna occupation because it feeds on itself. It never seems to gain momentum to do the great things it has the promise to do. I fault here the leadership models it creates. Teachers are not great managers, managers are not great administrators, administrators are not great businessmen. Put this together and you get very average in most cases - especially when there is an unwillingness to learn new skills.

Leadership in a school environment requires a vision of the big picture and then a plan to enact the vision. Without a plan, progress cannot be measured and people can't be held responsible. Circuit breakers need to be kept in place to ensure that senior management is not restricting access to information, typically to hide inefficiency and incompetency in leading repair and refinement of the teaching model.

It's not rocket science, but it's not easy to overcome organisational inertia and friction either. Gaining momentum takes time and needs ongoing breaking of ground to keep going. Finding those willing to break ground for little reward is difficult, luckily there are still vocational teachers in the system - seeking stability and job satisfaction over monetary reward.

Thankfully when these people lead, others must follow or look lazy and incompetent. Loss of face is what pushes education forward more than PD or organisational goals. This is wrong but without structural changes, it's the main process for improvement. I don't think I have the answers, but I feel I am starting to ask the right questions.

Dropping the ball

I went to playgroup with my young daughter. A little girl tried to grab a ball that she was playing with. She pushed the girl away who then complained that my daughter wouldn't share.

Two minutes later I was playing throw with my daughter. The other girl, with tears in her eyes, came and joined us. We threw the ball between us and eventually I left them playing together. It was the first time I saw my little one enjoying playing with another child.

Getting kids to play nice requires help. Expecting appropriate peer interaction to appear miraculously is not appropriate. All too often we put kids together without supports where they can interact appropriately. The older kids get, the longer it takes to overcome negative behaviours and peer stereotyping.

A perceived benefit of the heterogenous class and middle schooling is improved peer interaction. The problem is that all too often the skills required by students to benefit from interactions is not explicitly taught. My view is that the heterogenous class is the domain of the experienced teacher and beginning teachers should be sheltered from their demands, allowing them to develop content mastery and classroom management skills first, teaching strategies/pedagogy second.

Revision strategy

This year has been a better year for planned revision. Courses ended on time leaving a gap where we could do some in class work. To give ownership of the process to students, we pulled out the syllabus and decided what would be done in class together and what would be done on their own.

For a change students have been completing miscellaneous exercises all year, which is helping considerably in reducing revision requirements as is the increasing use of journals to centralise student notes.

Next students were told to get their revision books and answer the first question in each section (to build confidence, these are usually the easiest). The OT Lee books are best for this but the Purcell ones aren't bad either. Then do q4 of each section, then focus on sections where students are having the most difficulty.

Next I did the normal printing out of exam papers. One of the other maths teachers provided this suggestion on how to use them that I thought was a vast improvement on the usual, "look at the question, look at the answer" model. He suggested for students to read the whole paper and identify which questions they could answer, then (before answering any question) go back to their texts and investigate each topic they could not answer questions for. Only then sit down and answer the paper. I think this is a great idea.

The 11s in particular have used after school classes in addition to revision processes to master key topics. Vectors in year 11 remains a draw on time and is something we will focus more on during summer school. This is the fifth year working on study skills and revision to bring a methodology to aid mid performing students, and I think we are identifying a winning formula.

I'm sure high performing schools have more structured and better processes in place, but these ideas are a vast improvement on what we started with.

Russ.

Portfolio Pathway

Many of our students are on Portfolio pathway - an alternate entry strategy for students to get into university.  I sat down with our careers adviser this morning to get an idea of what was involved in portfolio pathway.

The bottom line is that only two subjects are required to be passed (one of which is English) and the remainder of the application process is based upon community involvement.  It is a challenging idea  I'm trying to get to grips with how a student that can't pass school will be able to pass university.  It must be working to some degree as ECU is pursuing this strategy to get low SES students into university.  I imagine that they are banking on the idea that students in low SES schools develop late and with bridging courses they will be ok.

The reason I investigated further was that statements were being made that teachers did not understand portfolio pathway.  This I think is true.  Teachers in weeks up to mock exams are in a flap getting students ready for exams.   These exams are typically worth 25% of their year grade.  Following this is an external exam worth 50% of their year grade (I know this is a gross simplification but it illustrates the point).  If students are seen as putting non academic pursuits first in the weeks prior to mock exams academic teachers will be asking questions - especially if the school itself is encouraging students to pursue non assessment tasks in this time.

The portfolio pathway makes the exams for the majority of their classes largely irrelevant - a minimum amount of effort (to justify WACE grades) is sufficient.  If teachers are told a student is now on a portfolio pathway, a student is better off doing community events to bolster their portfolio for university entry than study to the extent required of an ATAR candidate.

Furthermore, if a student is on a portfolio pathway and unlikely to be studying to the level required of an ATAR candidate - this has the possibility to effect moderation by producing distorted ordering in the grade distribution.

The idea that our students can do external pursuits and academic pursuits is challenging as the best of us would struggle to compete with students without external concerns. It was put to me "a hockey student going to nationals will not put aside their hockey aspirations for their university aspirations - they will do both."  I don't know if this is true.  Many will hedge their bets and put sport aside in the weeks leading to exams and ensure they have a future going forward.  Elite athletes may make this decision but otherwise it seems to me a strange one.

I feel for people that see school events as huge events in their lives.  As someone that found life to be preferable to any events in school, I suppose I see the opening of opportunities post education greater than the impact of any singular school events.  I probably overestimate the contribution of MESS subjects to roles in life because of their contribution to my life.  Without my Math, English, Sose and Science teachers I never would have had the opportunities I have enjoyed.  My desire for my kids to have these same opportunities (and more) is likely similar to opportunities found by teachers in the school using skills from non MESS subjects.

Interactive Whiteboard usage

I have an interactive whiteboard in my classroom.  It's a 2.1m wide Promethean with a short throw projector.  I was reticent about getting an IWB as I had one in the past and it was smaller than a normal whiteboard, laggy, difficult to see in full light, was easy to cast a shadow upon while writing and had little in the way of usable technology for mathematics.

5 years later and things have changed.  My old whiteboard was only marginally larger than my new IWB.  The lag is gone (.. well .. nearly).  The short throw projector casts a minimal shadow.  The basic software is more functional than ruler and pen.

I'm not singing the praises of Promethean, I haven't used a Smartboard or its software since my awful introduction to IWBs five years ago.  I can just see how it helps deliver my material.

I can step forward/backward through slides
I can draw axes, coordinates and lines with ease
I can annotate graphs (such as those drawn by Autograph) for regression/seasonality and functions work (with a little difficulty)
I can share and store successful lessons more easily
I can write solutions digitally for sharing for small group moderation
It saves a few dollars in whiteboard markers (but will probably cost more in power and projector globes)

The advantages make my day more pleasant.  The downside is that lessons take considerably more time to prepare initially because you have to think of ways to use it effectively, whereas those methods already exist with a whiteboard.

There is also a short term motivational increase evident in student behaviour (which I expect to dissipate with familiarity).

I am guilty of not using the IWB to its fullest, but after 1 term, it is proving to be an integral part of my classroom, being used in every class.

The apple macbook powering the board has caused some problems.  The obvious being the difficulty in running PC software (such as FX draw and Classpad manager).  These we're slowly overcoming.  A big advantage of the mac is the fast powerup.  I have a backup PC on my desk and the thought of waiting for SOE4 to boot is enough for it to be an absolute last resort.

The big question is does it improve the results of my students?  The answer is.. well.. maybe..   I can more easily use some interactives for aid in learning but I haven't seen any great improvement in results.  The cost to implement is around 7-8K at present which is not a huge impost (compared to some of the money the government is throwing around) but as an insight into department funding - it is more than the entire 8-12 math budget for last year.  I couldn't really use student improvement as a justification for installing IWB's in schools - there are more reliable ways of raising student performance than IWB's.

Implementation (after installation) has gone smoothly with good support from the school technician.. I won't say great support or he might get slack :-)..  Now as a mature technology, opportunities are available to improve teaching practices further and collaborate with a much wider group of teachers.

I would probably still get an IWB if I was given the option.  The collaborative opportunities are just too many to ignore and are relatively easy to implement, even if the student benefit is harder to quantify.  Reviewing student board work or examining teaching pedagogy in particular becomes much simpler and is more easily recorded.  Unlike 1-1 laptop rollouts, surprisingly I think I currently fall in favour of IWB rollouts.

Making best use of teachers

Teachers are required to complete a range of duties other than face to face teaching time. Assignments and tests take time to be written and marked, programmes take time to be written, lessons need to be planned for, revision materials gathered, student teachers mentored, behavioural issues resolved, discussion is needed between moderating partners, coordination required for consistent judgements of student work. The first three alone take much of the time. You can normally spot an overloaded teacher because they are starting to wing more lessons and reduce the amount of assessment done or are reusing materials without tailoring them to the cohort.

Classroom first was a policy that quarantined teachers from duties other than that directly required by the classroom. It was a push back onto admin. It seems that that push back is starting to unravel and DOTT time is again being used for a raft of other things. The latest salary negotiation seems to be wrestling with getting teachers to do more.

You can't get blood out of a stone. We have high utilisation of teachers compared to OECD countries (see here page 406, albeit more appropriate statistics exist). Better lessons, better outcomes are not achieved by pushing untested rollouts, extended workdays, ill prepared curriculum directives and larger class sizes. It's done with effective management, good marketing and long/medium and short term planning with strong leadership and good morale.