Students get new subject: the test

The Australian Reports:

VICTORIAN teachers are being told to “explicitly teach” for the national literacy and numeracy tests as part of a drive to lift the state’s overall performance with the release of nationwide test results.

A state Education Department memo sent to schools in rural Victoria, obtained by The Australian, sets out a 10-week strategy for the department and schools and a “delivery strategy” for teachers in the lead-up to the next national literacy and numeracy tests, which students in Years 3, 5, 7 and 9 will sit in May.

The memo, emailed to school principals in the Loddon Mallee region last week, says teachers should teach their students about NAPLAN (National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy), including the commonly used terms and a daily NAPLAN item in their teaching program.

Principals are told to appoint a NAPLAN co-ordinator, set up a sample testing process that may “require resourcing” and”provide additional assistance for students identified capable of making significant improvement”.

Full article here

My School statistics give `flawed’ picture

The Australian Reports

“THE school comparisons on the My School website are based on the characteristics of the general community rather than the background of the children attending each school, which testing experts said provides a flawed judgment of performance.”

Full story here

Waldorf Model: Assessment without high-stakes testing (US)

Dick Kantenberger, Education writer for the online site the Examiner.com writes:

I received several e-mails with questions about the Waldorf Schools model for Assessment without high-stakes testing. First, there is a great deal of information on most any search engine, e.g. Google.com. But I found something in a book several years ago by Eric Jensen called Music with the Brain in Mind that you may not easily find on Google. I have also talked with Dr. Rick Olenchak at the University of Houston about Waldorf Schools and found he is also a strong advocate of their overall educational model. I think you will find interesting this very short segment from Mr. Jensen’s book.

“Perhaps one of the best long-term models for examining the process and results of integrating music into the curriculum is the Waldorf School. For more than fifty years, learners attending Waldorf education programs have had the opportunity to explore their musical interests through standard curriculum activities.  As an independent, arts-centered learning institution, the Waldorf School is one of the fastest-growing education enterprises in the world: Today there are 130 in America and 700 worldwide. (now over 1000 worldwide, D.K.)

For straight-line, conservative, standards-seeking, bean-counting, highly competitive parents, the Waldorf philosophy may, in fact, seem outrageous.

But something must be working. Prominent educational figures including Howard Gardner and Theodore Sizer express admiration for this method. On SAT exams, Waldorf students outperform national averages. They often pass achievement tests at double or triple the rate for public school students (Oppenheimer 1999). College professors remark about the humility, sense of wonder, concentration, and intellectual resourcefulness of Waldorf graduates. These lean-budgeted, small private schools have produced the likes of Oscar-winning actor Paul Newman, Nobel novelist Saul Bellow, and legendary dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov. The Waldorf curriculum, which is heavily grounded in the arts and particularly music, exposes all first graders to their own (likely first) musical instrument-a recorder. Their instrument is stored in a case they build themselves. Beyond this, the school offers jazz, choir, orchestra, and more.

A day may start with singing and end with a dramatic performance. All this is offered along with the subjects of  science, history, literature, and math, but they learn these through the process of the arts. . Naturally, there are thousands of other examples of schools worldwide that also emphasize music and are successful, but it doesn’t take a private school to make it happen. Any school can do it.”

Full article here

Music education improves learning in other subjects

The Sydney Morning Herald reports

A NATIONAL campaign has been launched to make music classes compulsory in all primary schools after the head of the Music Council of Australia, Dick Letts, said this week that he favoured making it optional.

One of the campaign’s leaders, Richard Gill, who is the artistic director of the Sydney Symphony’s education program, said there was scientific evidence that children undertaking serious music education improved in all other subjects and general wellbeing.

The national curriculum authority is considering the make-up of the syllabus for 2012 and the competing demands of visual arts, media studies, dance, drama and music. Letts said every school would have to offer at least two art forms and he did not want to create a dispute between advocates of the different disciplines.

”The last thing I want to see is the authority throw up its hands if we start fighting among ourselves,” he said.

”At present, 80 per cent of schools have no music worth mentioning and there is an urgent need to improve resources.”

(Ed. It will be interesting to watch as the question of Arts and the National Curriculum heats up)

Teaching for tests rejected

The courier mail in Queensland reports (extracts):

PRINCIPALS of some of Queensland’s top-performing schools in last year’s national exams have lambasted a push to teach students the tests to help lift literacy and numeracy standards.

Some of the top-performing schools don’t even believe in testing.

Samford Valley Steiner School school facilitator Wendy Butler said its philosophy of education did not place a great value on artificial testing. Despite that, the school was one of only four to lift all of their year 9 students above the national minimum standards in last year’s exams. “What we are working within Steiner education is to develop capacities . . . and that sort of paper multiple-choice artificial environment isn’t a true reflection of capacity,” she said.

At Somerville House, one of only two Queensland schools to lift all their Year 3, 5 and 7 students above the national minimum standard in last year’s NAPLAN (National Assessment Program – Literacy and Numeracy) exams, principal Ness Goodwin said test preparation stultified learning.

It follows a State Government push earlier this year for schools to teach the 2008 NAPLAN exams after Queensland students came second-last nationally last year. The 2008 school-by-school exam results were revealed for the first time in The Courier-Mail on the weekend.

“We absolutely resist that approach. We believe that stultifies teaching, it certainly stultifies the learning process,” Dr Goodwin said.

“We are very strongly of the view that if we give the students a very broad education, a very strongly focused academic education as well, that is the best preparation they are going to have for any test.

The Queensland Government asked all of its state schools to practise past NAPLAN exams earlier this year after a recommendation by leading educator Professor Geoff Masters, who was hired to help lift Queensland students lagging literacy, numeracy and science standards.

Full article here

Life Matters Feature

On wednesday 26 August 2009 we featured on ABC Radio National Life Matters.From all reports the segment was well received by listeners.

The segment is available to lisen to online at ABC Radio National Online.

The link directly to the article is available here:

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/lifematters/stories/2009/2666279.htm

And while you’re here, we also ask you to please inform other parents and supports of Waldorf Education in Australia about our website and tell them to visit www.waldorfparentsunite.org for all the latest on waldorf education and the national curriculum.

If you have any articles, reports or research which you would like to share with us please contact us. We would love to hear from you.

Welcome Life Matters Listener

Well it seems we’ve made it onto ABC radio’s Life Matters.

From what started as a small group of concerned parents at the Mt Barker Waldorf School, we are now on national radio!

Thank you to everyone for your support and thank you also to those of you who take an active interest in ensuring that as a society we operate in an informed and educated way with regards to issues of national interest.

We value choice and diversity in education and want to see Waldorf education in Australia recognised as an equivalent international curriculum so it may continue as an educational choice for current and future generations.

The ACARA board is currently working on a process to recognise alternative curricula, which will be released shortly. We are quietly hopeful, well aware the Rudolf Steiner Schools Association (RSSA) has been working closely with government, but at the same time we are prepared for the worst if ‘the wheels come off’ as they say. Here’s to a progressive society where choice and diversity in education remains available.

Please support our cause and keep informed by joining our mailing list.

Otherwise feel free to look around or leave a comment.

They said we want an education revolution

The Australian Reports:

Australian National Curriculum looks to Britain.

When it comes to the federal government’s education revolution, the reality is that Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard are simply copying policies implemented by Blair when he was British prime minister.

Initiatives such as early childhood education, a national curriculum and national testing, identifying under-performing schools and holding them accountable and investing in computers and information and communication technology, are all copied from British Labour.

Even the rhetoric is the same.

Given that Rudd’s education revolution mirrors events in Britain, the question needs to be asked: have the Blair policies succeeded in raising standards and strengthening schools?

Based on the results of the most recent national tests for 11-year-olds, where two in every five children are leaving primary school under-performing in mathematics, science and English, the answer is “no”.

Full article here

The Australian says ‘Let parents decide’

The Australian writes:

A voucher system would address educational disadvantage

A PROPOSAL by the Institute of Public Affairs for publicly funded school vouchers is timely. In conjunction with the national curriculum to be rolled out from 2011 and transparent school reporting, a vouchers scheme would help transform the Rudd government’s education revolution from rhetoric to reality. Well implemented, it would do more to improve teaching and lift standards than the wasteful $14.7 billion school stimulus package.

The Australian has supported the concept of school vouchers for years. Already used in 30 countries, vouchers allow parents to spend their education dollars as they judge best for their children. Vouchers would particularly empower parents who have no alternative other than the nearest state school, increasing competition between schools and making them more responsive to student needs. Giving parents the chance to move their children from failing schools to high quality schools would go a long way towards addressing what Education Minister Julia Gillard calls the “long tail of educational under-achievement”.

.. In Sweden, the advent of a universal voucher in 1992 saw the number of private schools expand from 70 to 800. The scheme stimulated the opening of new schools as parents in poorer areas were given real choice.

Full article here

What do you think?

Gillard – Australian and US reform agenda’s are similar

(Ed. In a roundtable discussion on education reform, Australian Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard outlined the similarities between the reform agendas in the United States and Australia.)

“Gillard.. (emphasized) ..the fact that their success with creating a national curriculum has largely been the result of effective political maneuvering, including finding the right leader for the effort, beginning the process during the new government’s honeymoon period, and relying on a collaborative, representative, and data-driven approach. She also emphasized that the process is moving slowly and deliberatively enough that by the time the full curriculum is released, the stakeholders will have been involved so significantly and for so much of the process that they will see the actual curriculum as a foregone conclusion.”

(Ed. Concerning considering her further remarks that)

“.. the U.S. is moving slowly, and with significant opposition, towards the mere possibility of voluntary national standards, while Australia is embracing a full national curriculum.”

Full Article Here

Gillards Prepared Remarks (PDF)