Julie,
You say, 'The only ones who should feel afraid of schools performance reporting standards are those schools that are simply unwilling to improve performance for the benefit of students.'
That is a repugnant and totally unwarranted slur on teachers' professionalism.
It also ignores, through wilfull misrepresentation or sheer ignorance, the fact that most schools are unABLE to improve performance, simply because they are unable to increase their budgets. State governments, in case you didn't know, allocate funds to State schools, and schools must - and do - use their given allocation as best they can.
If all students (and their families) were equal, equal funds per student should perhaps produce equal outcomes. Children are not equal when they enter school, and anyone who has spent time working in a range of schools will agree that it takes more staff time (i.e. money) per student to compensate for a (relatively) deprived family background and/or lack of family support for learning. Sadly, the children who need it most are those least likely to attend the schools which have most money per student, so an initial imbalance is amplified by funding imbalances.
'League tables' in any form are likely to further increase existing differences as state systems are further residualised.
Your proposal only makes sense if resources are available equally to all schools on the basis of need. We are so desperately far from that now that I might as well say your proposal only makes sense in cloud-cuckoo land.
Kim,
Townsville

Educate for what? A citizen capable of functioning in society,as a member and worker? At present education seems devoted to the things which however crudely and unfairly can be scaled as a number. Meaning what, for edification of intellectually uninterested parents. Oh they want johny to do well, able to earn lots of money and be looked up to, a leader, but as pointed out the number attending Pand C associations is miserable. Rather more turn out to watch johny excel at sport, a measured learning outcom? Some to the debating society-an outcome. Frustrated and misinformed about sex, international politics, truth and honesty in public life, Measured, scaled outcomes, indicating on numbers of politicians, judges etc private schools doing better, that is producing more. An outcome correlated with the school or the parents intellectual background interacting with school, child, and parent? Is learning to be a parent a school scaled outcome? To be caring concerned and of sufficient integrity to seek out correct information in a world of spin, for that is what democracy requires not just emotive opinion at the poll. Oh yes is the ability to spin a scool scaled outcome or a personality outcome? As yet how a child learns is ill understood, what brain function produces a Hitler and all the others so far- a measured school outcome reported to parents as a predicted? Studies of the young child at www.Child Trauma.org suggests the outcome of school is more complex than current scalars can meaningfully predict, rather thay may be hard sells for muddled parents-and teachers.

How heartening to see how much better informed, compassionate and reasonable the posters are compared to the article writer.
As has already been pointed out, Australia has nothing like a level playing field when it comes to schools and their resources relative to the degree of difficulty they face with the students they are asked to educate. Worse, we now have a government who seems determined to make sure the playing field tilts even further away from the kids who have least towards the kids who already have most.
As someone said to the principal of a famous christian school recently; "Mate, you gave up the moral high ground when you accepted that public money."
Mind you, it would be good to see private schools being held as accountable for the public money they receive as public ones are. First and foremost, should schools that get more than 90% of their funds from taxpayers be able to pick and choose which of those taxpayers kids they will educate? Why one rule for them and another for public schools?

You might notice a quite remarkable consistency of views being expressed here, Julie. Somewhat at odds with your own scattergun approach to the topic of education, which seems to stem from a blind faith in Howard-style Conservative politics rather than any natural understanding of the forces involved in teaching stuff to kids.

Given that there is no "joined up" relationship between your last few articles, merely a "let them eat cake" capitalist tendency, I can only assume that you are a part-time Liberal party shill. If this isn't the case, perhaps in your next article you can start to show how your last three efforts - "Educating Kids for Profit", "State Schooling Sucks - Teach 'em at Home" and "Tie Teachers up with Administration - That'll Learn 'em" can be seen as a coherent expression of consistent policy.

Now that's an article I'd look forward to.

[Incidentally, you are somewhat bizarrely described by OLO as "Julie Novak is a Brisbane-based economist with expertise in Austrian/evolutionary economics and public choice theory", which could explain the fin-de-siecle Vienna flavour of your contributions - but I think we can assume that is a typo... yes?]

Hi Pericles,
That was not a typo - Austrian/evolutionary economics is quite correct. More information can be found here. http://ideas.repec.org/p/qld/uq2004/335.html
Regards
Susan Prior - editor

Thanks for the clarification Susan, which explains much of Ms Novak's somewhat compartmentalised approach to education. Anyone who has been wrestling with the identification of endogenous and exogenous variables in economic modelling deserves to be cut some slack.