The National Forum   Donate   Your Account   On Line Opinion   Forum   Blogs   Polling   About   
The Forum - On Line Opinion's article discussion area



Syndicate
RSS/XML


RSS 2.0

Main Articles General

Sign In      Register

The Forum > Article Comments > The launch, the crash and the recovery of My School > Comments

The launch, the crash and the recovery of My School : Comments

By Chris Bonnor, published 1/2/2010

When you get into the business of comparing schools, with all this entails, there can be little margin for error - too much is at stake.

  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. Page 3
  5. 4
  6. All
Fenton asks about the full schools and empty churches.

Easy.

Howard undid the rules about 'school placing' and encouraged new schools, knowing they would be faith schools.

This bought the loyalty of hordes of voters, although probably didn't change too many votes... that is only a guess though.

The rash of faith schools helped to build the 'values' base Howard created from 1995, pre election.

The moaning about public school 'values' was run in tandem with the the 'values' debate.

Parents, too stupid to demand better performance for their taxes in public schools, bought an easy way out- so-called 'private' schools.

Education is a commodity in our society. Buying an education absolves parents from any responsibility in what goes on in schools... they've paid for it, it must be good.

But few of these people are real 'believers'. Interesting to see how badly the low rent faith schools are placed in this area. Will parents be demanding their money back I wonder?

Anyway, 'private' schools are filling because of fear, and laziness.

Having to pay fees also allows both parents to work flat out and feel good about doing it to buy their kiddies a 'chance in life', while at the same time moaning about having to pay 'a great big tax', or any tax at all for that matter.... while not thinking twice about the 'tax' nature of school fees.

How stupid can you be?
Posted by The Blue Cross, Thursday, 4 February 2010 9:59:51 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
I would agree with Mr Brendan, also remembering that teachers originally taught the parents.

So if teachers are whinging about the current generation of parents, then it only highlights a previous failure of the education system.

It means that teachers did not teach the parents well enough when they were going to school.

A downward spiral develops, but its amazing how many teachers just don't get it.
Posted by vanna, Thursday, 4 February 2010 9:33:43 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
It’s always hard to have a conversation if you are on separate planets so I’ll let my awful politically correctness, (sneering) elitism, disdain for the right to know etc all go through to the keeper.

I guess one of the things I do get excited about is evidence. So when vanna says that “comparing one organization to another can bring about dramatic improvement” all I ask for is evidence that this works for schools. And I wouldn’t have an aversion to “high stakes testing” if it was a valid indicator of teacher and school effectiveness. Show me the evidence.

It is not true to say that “schools have not reported such data in the past” (vanna). What they have done is very patchy but I certainly started putting this data into school annual reports 15 years ago.

Schools should always need to be more accountable, but comparing raw test scores through an inadequate filter such as ICSEA isn’t the way to do it. I appreciate Mr Brendan’s cautions but this blowtorch needs to be directed at ACARA.

Isn’t the other problem in dialogue such as this is that we tend to project others into positions they don’t hold? In supporting independent professional appraisal of schools I’m not “cloulding accountability” (Sniggid). Just as any NZ principal if reviews by the Education Review Office “cloud accountability”.

My main concern has not been addressed: the data reported by ACARA does not sufficiently allow for variations in the enrolment profile of schools hence any resulting comparisons are not reliable. I’m still waiting for someone to demonstrate otherwise. Would someone please convince me that it is OK to compare test scores for two schools if one sets an entry test and the other can't?

In the future ACARA will substantially change the My School website to the point where we’ll eventually ask: why on earth didn’t they do this at the beginning? At the moment it isn’t good enough, and it isn’t just a matter of adding more - they need to fix what they’ve done.
Posted by Chris Bonnor, Friday, 5 February 2010 7:21:13 AM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
"Would someone please convince me that it is OK to compare test scores for two schools if one sets an entry test and the other can't?"

What is the purpose for which you are comparing? I will assume that you are a parent looking for the right school for your child.

The question facing a parent is will my child do better at MacRob (A selective school in Mebourne) or school XYZ.

The whole point of comparing is because schools are different. What should be controlled is the characteristics of the students not the school itself.

Suppose that socioeconomic background independently affected academic achievement. Suppose your child is in year 9, has an academic ability of say 90%, and a given socioeconomic level of X.

Then the relevant comparison (not to say that myschool.edu.au provides this) is of all schools that taught year 9 students with a starting ability of 90% and socioeconomic background of level X, how are they doing in a 1,2,3 years time?

That sort of information would be much more useful, than what you have now. Because a school might be good at "value-adding" but you don't know whether that is because they are good at "value-adding" on kids starting off at 40% or 90%. And a school that is good at value-adding for the kids starting off at 40% wouldn't necessarily be good at value-adding to kids starting off at 90%.

That being said, what is useful about raw test scores (what myschool.edu.au does provide) is it gives you an indication of the peers your child will be surrounded by
Posted by Mr Brendan, Friday, 5 February 2010 1:26:59 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Chris,

As a libertarian I assume that the public has a fundemental right to access of information, and that in order to restrict public access to this information requires evidence of substantial public harm.

Further I assume by your excitment by "evidence" that you have more than political rhetoric and suposition to back your call to restrict the public freedom to this information?
Posted by Shadow Minister, Friday, 5 February 2010 1:33:53 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
Dear God... do parents live in a total vacuum that they have no ideas or even impressions about the schools in their areas?

Are parents so divorced from life around them that they have been waiting like gormless toads for a set of 'tables' to advise them what to do with their precious charges?

How pathetic can the modern parent really be?

And what is the point of knowing that X school in Victoria is better than Y school in Qld, when you live in some Godforsaken dirt poor hole in the middle of RARA land, where there is no 'choice' at all, apart from boarding school, at a rate per child that exceeds the average income in many of these places?

Why do people insist on a 'market' and not simply a quality education system?

Why would anyone 'choose' to go to a 'poorly performing' school?

And with all the 'choice' in the world, parents in Wheelyerbarrbak NSW will never get to send their children to anything but the local school... one of... in the local town, so who is kidding whom here?
Posted by The Blue Cross, Friday, 5 February 2010 2:18:01 PM
Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard
  1. Pages:
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. Page 3
  5. 4
  6. All

About Us :: Search :: Discuss :: Feedback :: Legals :: Privacy