Education

This video of a TEDTalk by Geoffrey Canada is compelling. Fat chance teachers or teacher unions will grasp what he is saying:

Why, why, why does our education system look so similar to the way it did 50 years ago? Millions of students were failing then, as they are now — and it’s because we’re clinging to a business model that clearly doesn’t work. Education advocate Geoffrey Canada dares the system to look at the data, think about the customers and make systematic shifts in order to help greater numbers of kids excel.

This will be the next challenge for Hekia Parata….the teacher unions demanding that marking in red ink be stopped in case the poor petals get offended.

Teachers at a secondary school in London have been told they must not use red ink when marking homework in case it upsets pupils.

The move was condemned as “political correctness gone wild” and ministers were forced to deny the Government issues guidelines on the colour of teachers’ pens.

Tory MP Bob Blackman took his concerns to parliament after a teacher in his Harrow East constituency informed him the secondary school had banned staff from using red ink.  Read more »

I have been leaked a draft of part of the Green party Education policy.

The policy document looks like a work in progress, and a cut/paste job of a bunch of ideas…but the upshot of them is that the Green party appears to be going to spend millions in education and the main plank of the policy is to basically remove the role of parents in caring for children and instead making that the responsibility of a plethora of newly created positions and jobs.

There are some truly alarming ideas contained in the document which was authored by Green party spin-weasel and former Herald on Sunday and DominionPost journalist Leah Haines.

Many areas are vague, incomplete or missing data. It is as if they have decided to create a policy and are hoping the data will fit what they want to achieve.  Read more »

UK education minister, Michael Gove, continues to terrorise Britain’s militant teachers.

He wants to make them work longer, and have shorter holidays.

This guy should get a knighthood. I hope the NZEI are watching.

Schools should increase teaching hours and cut the length of traditional holidays because the education system is being “handicapped” by a 19th century timetable, Michael Gove warned today.

The Education Secretary said all schools should follow the example set in the Far East where pupils are expected to follow a longer day and get less time off.  Read more »

Glorified Auckland University drama teacher and private sector entrepreneur who profits through taxpayer funding (including incomes for his family) – Peter O’Connor – has has another ridiculous rant printed by the New Zealand Herald.

In New Zealand there is a significant tail of under achievement – for example New Zealand Maori are 23.1% behind non-Maori at Level 2 NCEA (at 34th on the PISA tables). Yet to O’Connor nothing needs changing and the Charter Schools proposal will bring on the Apocalypse.

Here are some of the statements the NZ Herald were excited to print from O’Connor:

I’ve seen it all now.

Teachers in the UK reckon they are overworked and have voted to work just four hours a day teaching kids.

“The National Union of Teachers (NUT) passed a motion on Tuesday demanding a new working week of 20 hours’ teaching time, up to 10 hours of lesson preparation and marking, and five hours of other duties, including time spent inputting data and at parents’ evenings.”

Earlier today I posted about student loans and why interest free student loans need to go. The author of the source article has emailed a response.

For whatever reason my comments are not being published on the blog – I would be surprise if you censored my mild response so perhaps there’s some glitch. [WO: It was a glitch, comments are now enabled]

Re:student loans. Your post is a bit of a misfire – we seem to hold similar views.

I have written extensively about the student loan scheme and concluded that there has to be some kind of interest rate reintroduced.

I urge you to read this previous article which I linked to in the one you have attacked:

Here’s a sample quote:

“Students have now been sucking on the election lolly for more than six years. One thing’s for sure – it will be a bitter pill to swallow.”

I myself have a reasonable sized student loan and would be perfectly happy to pay interest on it.  Read more »

A reader emails about Charter Schools. I found this email very interesting, something for other readers to discuss.

You have run a number of blogs over time about the unions and charter schools.

The unions obviously want to block charter schools. Perhaps it is because these big huge organisations with thousands of teachers are afraid they may be brought down by a small army inside a Trojan horse called “Charter/Partnership Schools”.

Perhaps it’s because education in NZ still revolves around the adults, not the students as we profess it does. Notice how, while unions, principals groups, Massey University, etc. pontificate about charter schools they all ignore the hard statistics relating to NZ kids becoming disengaged, dropping out of school, failing to achieve NCEA or any other school qualification, failing to enter university or the work force….least of all to mention the teen suicide rate …  Read more »

Once again – why are unions (and dull Massey academics) fighting this kind of thing?

Why do they consider the ongoing failure of certain groups to be in the best interest of unionised teachers?

Parents need to make the needs of their children known.

The opposition parties need to wake up and actually represent those they say they stand with. (a $50,000+ donation would be a start).

And teachers in NZ need to react against the bizarre protestations of their union overlords.

Last month, the respected private firm Mathematica Policy Research published a multiyear study of students enrolled in KIPP (the Knowledge Is Power Program), a network of 125 charter schools serving 41,000 students in 20 states and the District of Columbia. The study found that after three years students in the KIPP program were 11 months ahead of their traditional-public-school peers in math and eight months ahead in reading. Also after three years (or four for some children in the study), KIPP students were 14 months ahead in science and 11 months ahead in social studies.

These gains are substantial. For every three (or four) years they spend in the program, KIPP students are benefiting from almost a full year of greater learning growth than they would if they remained in traditional public schools.

This success is even more remarkable given that KIPP draws from some of the most disadvantaged communities in the country. Some 96% of KIPP students are black or Hispanic. More than four of five come from households with annual incomes low enough to qualify for subsidized school lunch.

What’s more, the typical incoming student at KIPP scores in the 45th percentile in district-wide reading and math exams. That initial achievement level is much lower than for the typical student entering the traditional public school system.

Other studies have found similar results. In a report released last month on charter schools in New York City, Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes found that after just one year, charter-school students had gained one more month of learning in reading and five more months in math, compared with their district-school peers. More than a fifth of New York’s public charter schools post significantly larger learning gains in reading than do their traditional counterparts—and nearly two-thirds of charters outperform traditional schools in math.

KIPP runs 10 schools in New York City, but it also has competition. In 2012, 87% of students in the Uncommon Schools charter network—which operates 15 New York City schools serving 3,900 kids—scored advanced or proficient in math. That is 27 percentage points above the city average. In English, more than half of Uncommon’s kids were advanced or proficient, beating the city average by eight percentage points.

What is the key to the success of schools like KIPP and Uncommon?

For starters, as independent public schools, charters aren’t weighed down by onerous regulations that stifle innovation. Administrators and teachers have the freedom to develop new and creative teaching methods. Charter schools have also attracted a new generation of talented, motivated teachers, school leaders and entrepreneurs through the promise of a new approach to educating underserved children.

Universities and tertiary institutions churn out thousands of people qualified for jobs where only dozens exist. I’ll bet there are more people training to be journalists than jobs exist, and the same goes for teachers.

In Australia the cost of this is enormous  but I imagine the costs of proving training and student loans is likewise enormous with little if any prospect of the majority of then working in their chosen field.

TENS of millions of dollars are being wasted training teachers who do not enter a classroom, with federal and state governments spending at least $16,500 on each student teacher every year despite up to 90 per cent in some states failing to find a job.

Universities graduate about 16,000 new teachers every year across the nation, half of whom are primary teachers, but an oversupply in the workforce means the vast majority of new teachers struggle to find work in schools.  Read more »