The Naplan tests are critical in determining the progress of students and education as a whole.

Even the teachers' union is in agreement that the Naplan testing is an important tool in monitoring the progress of children and the school. What they don't want is for the general public to be aware of it.

In trying to cancel the testing, the Teachers' union is targeting the children.

While there are downsides to "teaching to the tests" this only occurs if that is the sole objective. However, there no denying that if the more "holistic" teaching does not help the kids pass the tests, then there is a problem.

Capable teachers, such as at the independent schools do both.

With respect to accountability, the teacher evaluations have no effect on the teacher's pay or promotion through seniority, and there is seldom formal measurement against targets.

The Naplan testing and myschool were instrumental in showing up the plight of aboriginal education, and this has focussed attention and resources to fix the problem. Without this scrutiny it would simply be business as usual.

blairbar, I have been on the site several times just to check it out - and I have no kids. How many of your 'hits' can be counted as just curiosity? It is a known fact that when something on the net is in the news hits, sky rocket.

Secondly, what about other factors that are not covered by the test? What happens if the child has parents are braking up, and fighting all night long. The child gets no sleep and so does poorly in the test. And what of the emotional instability experienced by the child during that time, will they have to move, have they done something to cause it (a big one for every child), will I be able to see mum/dad again if I do have to move, etc. Or what of abuse, or malnutrition, or bullying, or undiagnosed learning disabilities, or - well the list is truly endless. The NAPLAN test, nor any other test takes this into account, privacy and all that (if the teachers even knows at all sometimes). Now some may say 'But how often will that happen?' Well just look at any area, the poorer areas usually have higher crime, domestic violence, malnutrition, drug use rates than richer areas. These factors will ALWAYS have an effect on a student’s performance. In a richer areas you may have only a handful of students in the school who area affected by these issues, but in a poorer area you could have a handful or more in every class!

The fear about the reporting of results online is about that fact that it is a single number, it is not weighted against the socio-economic situation of the school, it is not weighted against practical issues faced by teachers every day. The fear is that it will lead to restriction of desperately needed funding due to factors well outside the teacher control.

Teaching to the test isn't a strong argument. It's just another of those "welcome to the real world" moments. However, there are other problems.

Teachers who have been at a school for a while will do everything possible to stack their class with the students who will get good results. Pray that your children don't end up in one of the other classes.

Teachers will cheat, some more than others. It is easy to manipulate a spelling test by pronouncing a word differently or by having a bank of words on the wall of the classroom. It is easy to bait certain students into either being sent home or refusing to complete the test.

Parents will assume that their children will get the same results as all of the other students at a school. If a school is full of kids from wealthy homes, they will get good average results. This doesn't imply that the children from worse performing schools would get the same results if they changed to that school. The students are different, not the school. In addition, don't assume that you will get your child into a school that gets good results. It is probably already full.

NAPLAN tests two areas of education only, it is not a measure of all things educational and doesn't pretend to be. What is wrong with accountability for under-performing schools? Difficult schools are usually pretty well known in the community, so publishing results hardly seems to be a moment of illumination. Difficult public schools in tough areas need lots of support, even silly league tables can be used to argue in favour of distribution of resources to such schools. I have taught in both difficult and affluent public schools and I can assure you that people in tough schools a) already know they are below the average in literacy and numeracy, b) are doing the best that can be done in circumstances of dysfunctional family breakdown, and c) need a lot of support - publishing their NAPLAN results is not the issue, gearing a school up to help kids in difficult home environments is the real issue.

TAC,
What causes these "difficult home environments" that teachers so often elude to. Its starting to sound like something from an excuse manual.

If there are so many of these "difficult home environments", then teachers have had 200 years to fix such problems, (because the education system has been in Australia for that long).

Or, has the education system indirectly created these "difficult home environments" (remembering that teachers taught the parents).

Good point Vanna. I agree that blaming the parents can be, and has been an excuse for incompetent teachers. The inability of poorer students to read basic English and understand basic Maths surely points to inadequete and inexcusable neglect by education professionals over a pretty long period of time. Incompetent teachers generally don't stick around too long in tough schools, partly because the kids work them over, but mainly because their hearts aren't in it.
The sort of family dysfunction I am talking about would include some of the following scenarios:
Child abuse (both physical and sexual); drug/tobacco/alcohol/gambling-addicted parents; chemically-induced psychosis (especially from the newer designer drugs like ecstasy, but also from bad reactions to marijuana)from drugs introduced to children and adolescents by families; clannish vigilante-ism (ie family groups feuding with other family groups, sometimes breaking out in the school yard); crime (sometimes involving major crime ranging from serious assault to murder); child abuse through neglect eg no breakfast before school, no clean clothing each day, no regular supervision by adults at home at evening and weekends. These are the problems well meaning teachers face in tough schools, and I have personally worked through all the above problems while trying to teach my high school subject. (The murder was not at school though I hasten to add, but a kid's relative was murdered by somebody else who was also known to the family - so it had a pretty big impact on that kid nevertheless).
The old saying is quite true: the apple never falls far from the tree. Education is not the panacea for society's ills, not even benchtesting via NAPLAN and the creation of a National Curriculum as a result.
Schools can, and, as you suggest Vanna, should be expected to, teach their subjects well. If we wish to be saved from ourselves and the consequences of our own actions though, then we (and particularly our kids) need to be saved in some other way, schools can't solve society's problems in 200 zillion years, let alone 200.