The vernacular of NAPLAN

world & scientific movement. Hiring private sector education system, schools and teachers look like.

experts as leaders. Appointing educational professionals to leadership

positions.

[From Finnish Ministry presentation slide. See Bruce Hammonds’ blog-spot on: www.leading-learning.co.nz]

Cookie cutter

Something mass-produced, made to same size and low quality. In schools, it suggests cutting all pupils’ potential to the same pattern. Policies of fear-laden rigour and forced compliance inevitably deaden individuality, encourage mediocrity and conformity without personal distinction i.e. cookie cutting aka the ‘procrustian procedure’. [Google “cookie cutter schools”]

Rubber room

An ‘Assignment Centre” at a district office where teachers, whose pupils perform poorly or who try to beat the testers by so-called ‘cheating’ methods or are deemed to be incompetent, are sent - without mentoring. Usually bare they are often compared to large padded cells. New York City has 13. Some videos are available on line about rubber rooms. [Google “rubber room schools”]

White flight

When parents from middle class suburbs drive their children to more affluent areas, because there are better facilities and are reputed to score better on the state blanket tests. [Helen Pitt : More to a school than good results SMH 17-12-10 P.17]

Terms of hope

Learnacy

Teaching pupils how to learn; to develop their unique styles of learning; to help pupils to accept motivating challenges and to do their best at subject-interests that take their fancy....the opposite of preparing pupils to face the annual paper/pencil hard-data collection. Learnacy, once operating in many classrooms, will become rare in the Klein hard-data system recently introduced to Australian schools.

Shared evaluation

Teaching children to be conscious of self improvement; to share their learning progress with teachers and respected adults, especially parents; to learn the many ways of sharing personal school progress in particular; and to progress in achievements beyond their own personal expectations. [At present, the concept is systemically unknown, unused, and development unencouraged]