Hasbeen,

I don't think the tests are testing the teacher. The third of grade 9 students in Victoria who did not know that 12/36 is 1/3 were somehow passed into grade 9.

They would also be passed into grade 10, and the teachers probably awarded a pay rise grabbed from the taxpayer.

How relavent is knowing that 12 is a third of 36...What are you going to do with it.
Check out operators don't need to know that, it's on the screen in front of them. Times have moved on. computers are not going to go away.
Those year 9 kids would be better off knowing how many calories there is in a big mac.
The kids are being taught by old school requirements. not up to date...

As an advocate of performance-based pay, vanna, I assume that you'll be pushing for a hefty Christmas bonus for Queensland teachers this December. After all, our kids recorded the greatest improvement in NAPLAN results this year. THAT takes a lot of effort and skill. It's easy to keep A-grade students at an A; it's a lot harder to pull the B- and C-grade students up to that level. As the closest thing we have to standardised national testing, NAPLAN affords our current batch of Queensland teachers quite a good rap.

Besides my frivolous comment to vanna, though, your article was very interesting. I agree with your sentiment about tests, tests and more tests. The most painful thing about it, as a teacher, is that we are being pushed to sacrifice real learning for the sake of these tests. I am lucky enough to work in a school (now) that uses the compulsory tests like NAPLAN as diagnostics. The idea is that they tell us a bit about the strengths and weaknesses of our curriculum, which we address. We don't teach test-taking skills, force countless practice tests on our students or push them to do better on these tests for the sake of their fellow students.

Sadly, I am aware of few other schools that behave in this way. So many focus on NAPLAN and QCS at the expense of other learning. I can understand that students are frustrated with school when the focus of their learning is, in so many cases, improving results on an arbitrary test that has no real impact on their post-schooling lives.

Otokonoko,
If the students marks are improving in all the major tests (for both girl and boy students) then the teachers should get some type of bonus.

However, it doesn’t take much to improve the marks of QLD primary school students.

Up until recently, about 5% of QLD primary school teacher’s time was being spent teaching science, and 78% of year 4 teachers did not use a science text book.

Queensland students' interest in science was below all 41 OECD countries, (or the lowest of all OECD countries), and the maths results for primary school students were below world average.

So it wouldn’t take much to improve on that absolutely abysmal record.

It is true that there are schools carrying out minimal analysis of student marks, with schools totally prepared to have the students repeat the same mistakes year after year.

These schools have had excuses (often supplied by the teachers union) that parents are to blame, or not enough taxpayer funding, or socio-economic circumstances, or too much money going to private schools blah, blah, blah.

I have seen areas of risk management in schools that were absolutely primitive, like stepping back 30 – 40 years.

One of the most insidious situations is the number of teachers I have heard saying that boy’s “do all right later on”.

This allowed these teachers to form a completely dismissive attitude towards boy students, and whenever marks were allowed out or made public, the boy’s marks were often in the lower half or lower quartile.

So it is increased marks for both boy and girl students in the major tests, and there can be an appropriate bonus.

If the marks decline or stay the same, there is no bonus or pay rise. This is no different to how many, (if not the majority), of companies now operate, and for many teachers, it is simply joining the real world.

 
Have a look at

http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education.html