Wot Test ? A Comment on the Global Assessment and Reporting Agenda

The events post S11 2001 have overshadowed a significant development in the USA that has major implications for education globally.
As his first (yes before defense and oil oligopolies) legislative act upon becoming the world most powerful man, George Bush junior passed a bill through congress that ties funding for the most disadvantaged of US schools to their performance on mass testing regimes. Teachers will be held “accountable” with local school boards able to sack poor performing teachers and direct funds away, yes away, from these disadvantaged schools. Of course in America, you can substitute disadvantaged for coloured, mainly black, people.

What’s this got to do with us here? Well the global anti-capitalist movement has shown the influence multinationals have in pressuring governments to allow them access to the public sector “monopolies” such as education.
But the local link is more concrete. In April 2002, the Menzies Institute “think tank” called for schools to be overseen by “community boards’ and for student funding to be tied to “voucher” schemes driven by “Lifelong Learning Accounts”. These accounts are envisioned as similar to super with employer, employee contributions. The account has an initial setup payment to get a student through the compulsory years. The funny thing about the “Menzies” think tank is they didn’t think it up. The Federal Labor party self proclaimed champion of educational thought, Mark Latham, did. His book, "What did you Learn @ School Today?" fully outlines his ideas on removing the state from having any responsibility for the education of all. The electorally astute Liberal Brendon Nelson realised the electoral liability of such ideas and shelved them instantly.
Yet the right wing economic rationalist push to reduce education to a set of scores that can be easily compared, digested and marketed continues. The ELLA test have been used by the NSW government to determine the allocation of STLD’s - not to increase the overall number, with the bizarre result that performance sees your STLD days disappear.
Add in KIDMAP, SNAP and primary Numeracy Tests, Computer Skills Tests and of course the BST and many teachers rightly feel we are becoming driven by the testing agenda rather than users of it.

This feeling is not an accident, here is the rationale as dictated by Louis Gerstner, chief executive officer of IBM, in “The New York Times”, some years ago -
“We must establish clear goals and measure progress to them. We must articulate exactly what we expect from schools. teachers, principals, students, and parents, and we must provide rewards and incentives to reach them...If the goals are not met we need to
enact stiff penalties, changing leadership, and even dismissing staff members in schools that aren’t performing...All of this will require....testing and assessment of both students and staff.”
This quote moderates the shift to outcomes we are moving through. While it is to be welcomed that we depart from the “bell-distribution” model that guarantees a ratio of failures, outcomes are in line with the idea of measured, marketable education “products”.

What to do? The push to force education to be more “market friendly” is global and linked with similar agendas for water, health and electricity. Hence we need to link up with the global anti-capitalist struggle through the union movement’s opposition to GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services). Millions globally have attended the anti-capitalist rallies.
We need to directly combat the testing push locally. The next pay deal must not include trade-offs for mass testing.
Doesn't central half yearly and yearly testing in the school hall fly in the face of the middle years talk regarding years 7 and 8?
The HSC review process is almost laughable as district office pumps 20 plus sheets of paper analysing every last detail of each HSC class. A Head Teacher colleague shed some wisdom “ten minutes looking at the results just plotted on a scatter graph would tell you far more”. Departments efforts to follow Louis Gerstner’s path are exemplified by the comparison reports of Year 5 BST data to SC results. Amongst the raft of statistical problems that could be exposed, the fact that students shift from primary to high school in Year 7, half way through this comparison period, is enough of a glaring reason to dismiss this “Department keen bean” attempt to analyse data to death.
The publicly criticised whitewash of the Geofff matser inquiry into the new HSC further shows that Department and the Board of Studies duopoly is more intent on a mandated rather than inclusive process.
In summary, testing should be subservient to the overall education process, not as an end in itself, and especially not as a commodification process.
Education should be free and enlightening, not measured and miserable.

John Morris, Canterbury Bankstown Association
Sir Joseph Banks High 95587051 0438641587

Update 2003
NSW Ed dept pushed its Assessment and Reporting Policy
USA’s George Bush Jnr first bill after the war is to push military wings onto many poor high schools, denying funding if they refuse.