Standard Fail
I’m puzzled.
There seems to be a lot of negativity being generated by the principles and teachers concerning the new education standards introduced yesterday. I understand the usual plea of schools saying they “needed more time to prepare”. The education system is notorious for having more resistance to change than even the health system, a resistance that seems to worsen the higher the level of education. However, I can’t see that the new standards will induce the same level of chaos that NCEA did, simply because they appear to be far less complex than NCEA. My understanding is that they are only a more detailed assessment of the three “R”s, enabling the government to target funding at schools that are not providing even this basic education. Thus there is an opportunity here for schools that have not been able to attract decent teachers in the past to gain more funding.
Frankly, I find the principle’s reaction to the prospect of extra funding to be somewhat baffling. It leads me to ask this question:
If it is going to be too difficult to assess reading, writing and basic math skills with the new standards, how have they been assessing the most important skills a child will ever learn under NCEA?
Have they been assessing these skills at all?
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Oct 24 09 8:59 pm
Story seems to change by the day, doesn’t it?
A few months ago, the story was “we already know how students are doing”.
Of course, that then begged the question as to why parents didn’t feel that they knew and how students were falling behind.
scrubone´s last blog ..Woops!