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Fair to compare?

By Jennifer Aberhart - posted Wednesday, 29 March 2006


It would seem that the media is intent on berating the Teacher’s Federation for its opposition to the release of “meaningful” statistical data that would compare the performances of schools.

One might pause for a moment and wonder why a large majority of teachers, not only from the “worst schools”, but also the “best schools”, are united in offering their support to the federation. Surely there should be a great division in the ranks and only those so-called under performing schools and teachers should be scared of exposure. Confident schools and their staff should surely want to boast of their prowess and be happy to embrace a system that would clearly show them as winners.

Fortunately most teachers are aware of the truth. Their opposition to the release of this data is because they know that it is not only meaningless but also generally misleading. The presentation of such data leads the public to believe that if we put the same team of teachers into half-a-dozen different schools then we would produce the same results. Schools and teachers are therefore assumed to be entirely responsible for the academic prowess of their pupils.

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What a complete load of codswallop! It’s a magnification of the old mistaken perception that the teacher who had the privilege of having the A stream, quiet studious children who produced the best work, was a better teacher than his colleague who did daily battle with children not as academically able or as well behaved. Every teacher knows that this is not necessarily true and in fact, the best teachers are often to be found in the worst classes, because they are better able to teach difficult children.

To rate teacher A against teacher B on the basis of the children’s end of term test results is therefore ludicrous. Most thinking people would agree that it’s entirely unrealistic to expect a B stream class to outperform an A stream class no matter how good the B class teacher is. Why then should we expect similar results from vastly different schools? How can we possibly fairly rate one school against another?

Unpalatable as the fact may be to some people, there are very marked differences in the performances of schools simply because of the particular community they serve. Some schools have a much larger proportion of academically able, willing and better behaved children than others do.

Some schools have children who are easy to teach. Some schools have children who are hard to teach. Some schools have a large majority of supportive parents who are themselves very literate and encourage their children’s academic performance. Other schools have larger proportions of children from impoverished backgrounds and teachers have to work very much harder to attain reasonable literacy and numeracy levels in their pupils.

What then is this "meaningful data" really measuring? Children are not clean slates for teachers to write on. They are products first and foremost of their families and communities. If people want the truth about schools, they must first accept the truth about families and their communities.

The release of this data will no doubt confirm what most people already know - schools in poorer socio-economic areas do not do as well as most private schools or public schools in more affluent areas. Do we really expect that “public pressure on poor schools” will ever change this fact? What is more likely is that the most able students in these schools would be the first ones moved to a “better” school by their parents thereby creating an even larger percentage of struggling students in the “poor” school.

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It might also be expected that teachers would also seek employment in “better” schools as that they might not like their reputation tarnished by being in a lower-ranked school. One might be forgiven for wondering whether there is some remote possibility that there is a hidden government agenda to encourage the current trend towards private education.

Governments are, of course, entirely aware of the great disparity between schools. They know that academic excellence often has more to do with parents’ own educational levels, where they live, or how much income they are prepared to spend on securing a place in a more socially and economically advantaged school, than it has to do with local area teaching standards. They know that even though they will publish data that will rate every school against another, they also know that, much and all as they might like to, they cannot fairly berate a socially disadvantaged school for not performing as well as its socially advantaged counterpart.

How then do they propose to successfully identify these under performing teachers and schools they are threatening to deal with? They intend to use even more statisitical data to create a number of school categories to allow them to discover their targeted scapegoats.

By grouping schools into a number of sub groups so that perhaps those schools that have a large proportion of children with English as a second language might be lumped together and then perhaps various allowances such as for specifically disabled students might also be factored in somewhere. Now the powers-that-be will have created their "Like Schools" groups, they can feel justified in persecuting the lowest performing schools in each of their specified and statistically adjusted categories.

They feel that they can now quite happily compare one school with another because they think that the use of statistical formulae has eliminated any other community differences and has exposed only the teaching prowess of those in each school. It defies imagination (well mine anyway) that we can statistically sweep away the myriad of differences between the mix of individuals who make up different schools and pretend that they are now competing on a level playing field.

School A will never be quite the same as school Q or school X no matter how much bureaucrats adjust their scales and pretend they are. If school X does not perform as well as school Q in some particular areas there may well be another perfectly rational explanation other than poor teaching. Their group of Aboriginal children might be quite different in ability or in experience to the other school’s group of Aboriginal children - but who will listen?

No one denies that “mediocrity” and “incompetence” will not be found among members of the teaching fraternity. It is no different to any other occupation. Every parent knows, or should know, if their child is unhappy or not progressing at school. Surely any problems with under-performing teachers can be dealt with effectively at a local level. There is no need to create some bureaucratic bullying system.

Every parent would no doubt like to send their child to the best school. But what is the best school? The highest academically achieving school may not be the best school for a child who is not very academically inclined. He might find himself struggling along at the bottom of the class, losing his self-esteem and throwing in the towel. The best school for a creative child might be one where there is a particular art teacher or program that suits him. The best school for a disabled child might well be one that caters best for his particular disability. The best school for a child might be the one with teachers he likes. There are so many other important things that go into making a good school than a narrow band of statistical data can ever identify.

It behoves us to remember the days when some poor child, who was doing his very best, but still struggling academically was made to stand in the corner with a dunce’s hat on his head because he didn’t answer the teacher’s question correctly. In the playground other children could follow the teacher’s example and point the finger, laugh and deride him for his inability to measure up. At examination time, children all had their test rank read out in front of the rest of the class. The teacher worked his way down from the top to bottom. It was quite a buzz for those at the top but mortifying for the rest of the children.

We all thought that education had come a long way since those days. Dunce’s hats and public disclosure of rank disappeared because they were deemed unfair and inappropriate. They often penalised a child for circumstances beyond his control or served to put unwarranted pressure on him to achieve the impossible.

It is strange how history, given enough time, always seems to find a new way to repeat itself. Why would a practice criticised for its unfairness to individuals now be touted as praiseworthy when it is applied to schools?

Will all those parents who are demanding public disclosure of their school’s performance compared to others be happy to also have their children’s test rank on public display in the school foyer? After all, their children have had equal opportunity, are of the similar age and have had the same teachers as their class-mates. How will the parents feel and what excuses will they use to defend their child if they find that a large number of children did much better than their child? They might be quick to concede that there might, in fact, be a large number of other factors that have some bearing on their child’s low achievement.

How many parents would really want to see their child publicly ranked against his peers? They understand that their child is an individual with different problems to cope with and talents outside those being measured. Surely they must understand the very same principles should apply to the ranking of schools?

Parents must not be caught up in the government hype that seeks only to deflect attention away from its own inadequacies and responsibilities. They must understand the possible consequences that may arise from such a ranking system. They must know that schools are made up of individuals and that averages do not tell us that even within the “poorest” school there are still likely to be a few very high achieving children and that the highest achieving school may also have a number of under achieving children.

Statistical data used inappropriately is a dangerous tool and no one should for one moment believe that the proposed assessments are going to be some sort of “cure-all” as touted.

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About the Author

Jennifer Aberhart is a primary teacher by profession with a particular interest in both children with literacy problems and the inadequacies of our educational system that significantly contributes to the failure of many of these children.

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