The past two weeks have been a flurry of minute to minute updates on where we all stand on state testing. Same song, third verse, right? Who hasn't sat in a staff room in the past 15 years at least and not heard someone discussing, griping, stressing, agonizing, arguing, and shouting about state testing?? Well, I have been watching with fascination how New South Wales is dealing with their latest outrage, including narrowly missing a full-on strike. I'll try to "briefly" explain the seige of memos, meetings, videos, and news articles out recently.
It seems that the New South Wales teacher federation (our Association equivolent) disagrees with the newspapers publishing league tables, showing test scores from schools all over the state. Teachers fear that parents are getting the wrong impression about a school's worth based on one set of data. Teachers fear that students are shamed by being published as part of that data (headlines read, "Students from ____ School considered unintelligent based on recent test data") and that parents will send their children to other schools that score higher on state tests.
The federation then asked that the government protect schools by not allowing the media to publish specific scores/school names. The government refused. The federation called a moratorium on NAPLAN testing (our OAKS). This meant that we voted in support of the moratorium, planned to not give the tests in the next two weeks as previously scheduled, and planned for casuals (substitutes) to be called in to give the tests as planned since the administration was not supporting the moratorium.
For a non-political person, I think I'm doing pretty well following all of this! It's fascinating to me given that 15 years I've heard about it, dealt with it, given the darned tests, lived (just barely) through a Reading First grant implementation, listened at ORA conferences on methods for best practices and covering our testing derrieres, and so on. But now I'm hearing how a different country, a different organization and political relationship operates on a very familiar topic.
Every day of last week there was a new memo in our "pigeon holes" updating us on what the newest scoop was. Were we coming to work or not?? Then, what do you know, by Thursday there was a change in plans from the higher ups!
The Deputy Prime Minister then claimed she would address the misuse of school testing data and form a work party to reevaluate process of data distribution.
The federation has been watching and listening to England and the U.S. and how we've dealt with the stresses of the testing issues. Yeah, I say, but we don't have the powerful association machine that you all have here. I'm watching and gleaning what I can every day.
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