Filip.
Do'h! I hate myself for not having noticed the obvious connection with your real name. I must have been in one of my literal periods when I only note names as useful handles, not thinking to appraise them! And because you've been so upfront (thank you), I should stress that no Dept of Ed ever officially proposed proscribing all tests that did not teach; it was a proposal in an Australia-wide working group paper — ACAP if that rings any bells — from a very high powered individual within his state organisation, sadly long since dead, who the rest of us thought quite capable of persuading his state to adopt his view if he could get it past us. Geoff Masters was probably the ACER rep at the time.
You might be surprised to know that I was the bloke who sketched out, and passionately argued for, the adoption of a fuzzy standards based pupil profile in which students' work would be compared by teachers with a graduated set of annotated exemplars supported by "indicators" that were no more than behaviours pupils could typically be expected to exhibit (but might not) as they approached key rungs on a K-12 ladder, and who lost control when new state leaders invented CURASS, took over the whole assessment show, turned the indicators into compulsory, atomised outcomes, each in its unique cell in a stage-based matrix, dispensed with the annotated exemplars, and claimed to have objectified assessment. And only later realised that when you drill down on achievement to that level of atomised detail, and rely only on that, you literally needs thousands of "outcomes" to comprise even a partial account of the complex entity that is what a child learns in a year.
But this is turning OLO into a "remember when" session between one old fart whose day has passed and (… please supply your own category); and that's not its purpose. You keep writing and I'll keep being rude when I think you overstate a detail.
Glen Coulton

its all explain in how they dumbed down the usa education system
but the search didnt reveal it
http://www.google.com/search?q=how+they+dumbed+down+education&btnG=Search&oq=how+they+dumbed+down+education&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=s&gs_upl=1517050l1527862l0l1530407l30l27l0l12l0l0l1315l1884l5-1.0.1l2l0

ok new search term
http://www.google.com/search?q=how+they+dumbed+down+education+in+usa&btnG=Search&gs_sm=s&gs_upl=1517050l1527862l0l1530407l30l27l0l12l0l0l1315l1884l5-1.0.1l2l0&oq=how+they+dumbed+down+education+in+usa&aq=f&aqi=&aql=

ok maybe an overvieuw
http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/pages/book.htm

might be here
[its the books source material]
key info...[if only we had reporters doing their reportage]
http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/pages/pdf_downloads.html

oh well
thats my short attention span
just like i was taught to do

in the dumbing down system
hyjacked by coorperate intrests
http://www.google.com/search?q=how+they+dumbed+down+education+in+usa&btnG=Search&gs_sm=s&gs_upl=1517050l1527862l0l1530407l30l27l0l12l0l0l1315l1884l5-1.0.1l2l0&oq=how+they+dumbed+down+education+in+usa&aq=f&aqi=&aql=

even using the un
http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3Djjer4fTUA-I&sa=U&ei=MEUCT7W8GIifiQfq3vS4AQ&ved=0CCYQtwIwBg&sig2=DUOT4vZyig6FnwesL4t-0g&usg=AFQjCNEwZTyjjf6EQnNkN2aRbpIntNK3JQ

My Glen C you do know some big words, don't you? Like to show them off a bit too, don't you? Is that an ego thing, or do you think you can hide behind a heap of gobbledygook? All that "in" speak can only be to sound important, while saying nothing that could be held against you. Just reading your post highlights the problems we face in education.

What comes out of our schools today is basically worthless, & getting worse. This will continue while we have in class assessment, & assessment by assignment. The latter allows too much input by "helpers", & the former is only a ploy to allow incompetent teachers hide how badly their pupils are doing.

Little tests at the end of a segment only mean the subject can be forgotten for ever. What we need is a return to one externally set & marked yearly exam, to find out which pupils have learnt anything.

Kids will only be able to reproduce something studied 9 months ago if they understood it at the time. What we need to know is what they have understood, not what they, [or a mum/dad/tutor], could produce in an assignment.

This would also weed out those who can't perform under pressure. These are useless in the real world, & could be guided into the public service, probably in the education system.

As a parent I have a right to know what my kids are actually learning, & as an employer I have a right to accurate school reports to evaluate kids from different schools.

I like Phil Cullen's take on schools, and his observations that, in effect, Gillard is criminally negligent in her ridiculous 'education revolution' nonsense.

She has, I am trying to be generous here, taken her own stratospheric flight through Unley public school as a journey that every child was capable of, and she has failed to take into account any variations within families, children and school teachers as she has dumped utter crap onto our school system, from testing to chaplains, from poorly designed buildings to giving principals more power.

The last of my daughters left school in November, thank the gods. A more miserable and rule driven POW camp could not be found anywhere (except in every other Qld public school of course).

It's not just NAPLAN testing, after all, in high school that only happens in Y9, but all my daughters suffered about 10 months of QCS testing and practice too, every week, from November til Aug-Sept when the final test is taken.

Talk about fixing the odds!

Why should a university take these tests to show anything, when teachers spend countless hours, with no feedback to students or parents, on this exercise?

Which is designed to make the school principal look good, and promote their career path within a moribund state education department.

Of course, university training of teachers is less then useless these days. Very rarely do students get a new teacher worth a cracker, and the notion of mentoring new staff into a school and a career is non existent.

And now we find unqualified school chaplains are 'assisting' teachers in helping the ill-equipped to deal with education (or what passes for education today), a major plank in both Gillard's education revolution and Bligh's continued support for a school system that is less able to operate than the Bundaberg Hospital (or the rest of Q Health so it seems).

The intrusion of low grade politics into the classroom has never been more visible than under Gillard and Bligh, on a par with Joh and his Creation Science supporting education minister, during Phil's time here in Qld.

I want to say thank you to "one under god" for providing access to such useful and provocative readings. I'm familiar with Gatto, but had neglected him of late. The opportunity that OLO provides to: "Light up the darkness, keep the faith and give the bastards the business."[Gatto] is first rate. There's a little heat in the kitchen at times, but there is sincerity in the remarks, as a rule.
My main passion in life is concern for school kids. I really would like Aussie kids to learn as much as they can and enjoy it; to develop, with their teacher's help their unique styles of learning; and to like schooling so much that they keep at learning, learning, learning unil they cark it. I don't like the totalitarian control of schooling as introduced in 2009 - a complete change to the system, unrequested, unwarranted and damaging to children's development.
Thanks to all contributors. Phil Cullen

My observations as a teacher are that students leaving secondary school are generally highly articulate and most demonstrate very good levels of literacy - it seems to be steadily improving. I cannot comment about levels of numeracy. This improvement in literacy suggests that something is 'right' with the system.

There is nothing wrong with measuring standards but to teach to the test demeans students, wastes teacher time and resources and skews the results of tests.

I've seen schools use the results of NAPLAN as a selling point for the parents of prospective students. It's mostly about bums on seats because that is the source of funding.

We've lost our way.