Vanna

A teacher can recognise that a student is having difficulty learning.

The reasons for the learning difficulty could be many and varied.

Education authorities, across the world, set processes for referral of students with potential learning difficulties to specialists [teaching and medical] for diagnosis of the reasons for, and the nature of, the learning difficulty.

These same education authorities set processes for documentation, and official "recognition", of a student's learning difficulty, and the possible allocation of resources to support that student.

Sadly, these processes can take from 6 months to 2 years, and do not always result in support for the teacher or student, because of financial restraints.

During the process, teachers make, and document, observations, and seek supporting documentary information, that will assist the specialists in their diagnosis.

At the same time as preparing learning materials and strategies for another 25+ students, the teacher would normally prepare a different range of learning materials and strategies for the student with learning difficulties.

In many Schools in my area, it is unlikely that a teacher would have only one student with learning difficulties in a class.

I have had a minimum of 5 students, and up to 15 students, with learning difficulties or learning disability, in my "normal" classes of around 25 students, for the past 7 years.

Having a teacher diagnose a learning difficulty would be like having the Triage Nurse in a hospital diagnose a patient's condition on arrival. The Triage Nurse gathers information and observations that are rightly passed on to the Doctor for further observation, assessment and diagnosis.

I would not like to have my medical condition diagnosed by a Triage Nurse, even if that Nurse made valuable observations that assisted the Doctor to make the final diagnosis, and direct appropriate treatment.

Similarly, I refer students to specialists for diagnosis of learning difficulties and disabilities, after making, and documenting, my initial observations.

RJohn
By having to call in a specialist teacher, the normal class teacher is now de-skilling. Similarly, by having to use a special teacher to teach science, the normal class teacher is also de-skilling, yet teachers want more money.

As was mentioned in earlier posts, nothing improves without it being measured.

I have seen reports prepared within a school that showed that the marks obtained by a student in the first semester exams of grade 8 were the type of marks obtained by that student in grade 12. If the student received mainly C’s in grade 8, they mainly received C’s in grade 12.

A good school should be able to gradually lift a student’s marks as they progress through the grades, so if the student received C’s in grade 8, a good school should be able to lift their marks to B’s (at least) by grade 12.

That would be a good school, and that is the type of school parents want to know about.

That is the type of school teachers should want to know about also, but neither the parents or teachers will know about it if nothing is properly measured and reported on.

Did you also see the list of calculators on the largest French site on the Internet (30 million hits per month). That site lists 170 calculators from all parts of the world, and a freeware calculator designed in QLD for students is at the top of that list.

http://www.01net.com/telecharger/windows/Bureautique/calculatrice/

Of course the QLD education system would never use it, because it hasn’t been imported at taxpayer’s expense from the US.

One of the obvious benefits of having schools assessed and ranked would be to identify those that needed help.

(You would at the same time, of course, need to commit to providing such help.)

An acquaintance of mine in the UK is an ex-Head Teacher, whose job was to trouble-shoot schools deemed to be "failing". This involved temporarily standing down the incumbent Head for a minimum of a full term, and running the school for a period to determine where the key problem areas lay.

The report at the end of the period formed the basis of an action plan to increase performance. Staff, facilities, support services, all were examined - not by a bureaucrat with a clipboard, but a fully-functioning and highly experienced Head Teacher.

From the few before-and-after reports I have seen, it was quite effective.

There is always suspicion, where measurements are concerned, that they will be used adversarially. This doesn't need to be the case.

Sweden, for example, recently tackled the vexed question of their hospital waiting lists, by reversing the interpretation of the data involved.

They had...

"...tried and failed to cut queues by increasing direct funding for hospitals and even issued an edict requiring hospitals to cut queues for elective operations to three months. Then, last year, the health ministry said it would create a fund into which it would pay SKr1 billion ($128m) a year for local authorities that managed to reduce waiting times to that threshold. Nine months ago virtually none of the counties passed, but this month the health minister revealed that nearly all had cut their queues to three months or less." The Economist June 25th 2009

The measurement - length of waiting list - didn't change. But the authorities' response to it, did.

"In the past... hospital bosses believed waiting lists were a sign of being overloaded, so they tolerated them in the hope of winning more funding. With the new scheme, however, 'no queues means more resources'”. ibid.

They might get the support needed if the perception of school ranking tables could be turned from "failure" to "opportunity".

Pericles

A non-adversarial, consultative approach seems to be more desirable than the currently-proposed approach, which has strong potential to degrade communities, Schools and teachers, rather than promote the cause of learning.

The idea of a truly-independent peer Principal assessment has a degree of potential to provide some desirable outcomes.

There is always the risk of School, community, Departmental and Government "politics" influencing the outcomes.

Depending on the person who performs such an evaluation, and any agenda that might be "provided" for them, the evaluation by a peer Principal, in the manner suggested, could help recognise the significant issues that need to be addressed in a School in a particular community.

It would be essential that the peer Principal had the opportunity to recognise any resource issues that needed to be redressed, and community issues that were beyond a School's reach.

It would also be important to the success of any such scheme that any recommendations received timely, appropriate responses at Government level.

Education Departments across Australia currently run regular, consultative, external, independent reviews of Schools that involve peer Principals and Departmental staff interacting with School staff, students and the wider community, although not in the manner suggested.

On your other point, it could be quite revealing to know exactly HOW the hospitals achieved the reduced waiting lists.

Vanna

Externally moderated assessment is the norm used by Education Departments across Australia to determine student achievement levels at Senior levels of schooling.

The nature of managing and moderating these levels prevents ALL students from achieving higher grades as they progress through a School, or ALL Schools.

If ALL students in a School, or ALL Schools, improve their raw scores across a subject, or ALL subjects, then the grading level [what you have defined as A, B, C] is influenced through the State-wide moderation process, using statistical measures.

The end result is that across the State the percentage of students who achieve at a particular grading level remains statistically consistent from year to year, with minor variations.

However, it is true that some students will progress, and increase their grades, as a result of the interaction between student learning and teacher instruction.

Research has shown that the teacher-student relationship is one of the most important factors in developing a positive interaction between student learning and teacher instruction, resulting in improved motivation and student learning.

RJohn,
If there is a state average, then of course there needs to be benchmark tests to determine if the state average is actually increasing over time or declining.

By various accounts, student marks have declined over the past 20 years.

However, if there is a state average, then a school can say “We will lift the marks of our students by x% as compared to the state average” (and not “Maybe” or “Would like to”).

Once a school says that they “Will” lift the student marks, and they actually do, then that is the school to focus on.

But I have a proposition for you.

Why not say to your class next week, “Class, at the end of the year we are going to carry out a class project. As a class, we are going to develop something that you can give to the students next year that will help them achieve better results”.

The class can then be left to think about it.

Then, at the end of the year, the students themselves develop something that they believe will enable next year’s students undertaking the same subject to achieve better results.

As a side issue, it will also be teaching the students to make something or produce something, and not just import everything from another country at the expense of the taxpayer.