Student education

Chris Hipkins labour member for Rimataka speech in Parliament against National Standards.

I had trouble uploading the video but you can check out the video on the ASCD Express newsletter.


'This bill is nothing more than a desperate attempt by the new National Government to come up to the fact that they have no new ideas on how to address underachievement in our schools', says Hipkins.'This bill will narrowly focus the education system on teaching kids a very, very narrow range of knowledge. The teachers will have to teach to the tests rather than teaching to the curriculum, it will grow the gap between the achievement rates of students of rich schools and the students of poor schools.'

The video is well worth a listen to.


To add a little more to the debate read what a New Zealand teacher sent me as a comment to my Alfie Kohns blog.

We should be following the role of Scotland not the backward paths of the UK and the US both who do worse than NZ in international tests. 'I am currently visiting my home town of Edinburgh and as I did my degree at Edinburgh University and was educated in Scotland I have been very interested to catch up with friends and discuss the revised Scottish Curriculum and the general stance here regarding National Testing.

I have been very interested to learn that National Tests are being abandonned in Edinburgh at the end of this school year so next year there will be no more National Testing here. I have had informal discussions about the stress that National Testing places on teachers, students and parents and have observed that there is huge pressure to prepare children for these tests and at times children can be put in for a test before all learning at a level is consolidated or even covered because the program is prescriptive and there is such pressure to achieve good results.

I am so pleased that National Tests are on their way out here and think that Scotland is demonstrating their understanding of the need for change in education through the Curriculum for Excellence and how this kind of curriculum cannot function effectively with imposed National Standards'.

Mary Chamberlain's new role seems to be defending the imposition of the Government's populist simplistic National Standards.After having observed her present 'her' ideas at a seminar held in Northland I am sure her heart is not in it. After her great work in developing the highly respected New Zealand Curriculum this diversion is a shame. This blog is in response to a letter she wrote to our local paper defending the standards.

It is sad to see Mary Chamberlain, a highly respected educator, in the role of the Government's 'spin doctor', defending the educationally unsound National Standards.

While Mary acknowledges that New Zealand students are among the best in the world in student achievement it is the worrying 'achievement tail' that requires the implementation of the National Standards to identify failing students. National Standards, she writes, are to be seen as 'signposts' for teachers and parents to indicate progress and suggest next steps.

Sounds sensible enough but she neglects to say that schools can already identify the children who are underachieving and also know that most of this underachievement relates to the considerable disadvantages in the circumstances of the children's lives. Anyone who has taught in low decile schools will understand this and parents, who do their best to get their children into high decile schools, obviously have good idea.

The introduction of National Standards in other countries have failed to make any lasting difference for such children. In the UK achievement at first lifted, then plateaued and now is trending down. Worse still children's attitudes and enjoyment of maths and reading is falling and teacher morale is at risk. Some price to pay for a politically imposed idea.

What is really required is to improve the home circumstances of the children 'at risk' and to provide schools some real resources and teachers professional assistance.

As for Mary saying that National Standards will not involve 'testing', children instead will be 'assessed', what does this mean? Standards, she assures, will also not result in 'teachers being pressurised to teach the tests'. In this she is being naive as this is exactly what has happened in countries that have introduced National Standards. In these countries other important areas, including the creative arts and science, have been sidelined as teachers focus on literacy and numeracy. Teachers have become snowed under collecting evidence and data taking them away from interacting with their students. Most parents know ,and research backs this up, that it is the quality of the teacher, and the relationship with their child, that really makes the difference. Under National Standards every learner will be assessed against the Standards as below, average, or above average twice a year. This will create winners and losers.

Mary concludes her letter by saying 'National Standards will improve teaching and learning in ALL areas of the curriculum and for ALL students'. This is being somewhat economical with the truth. She fails to mention that the current range of school advisers ( in physical eduction,art, music, science, technology, environmental education etc) will now be restricted to literacy and numeracy. For many students this will restrict their chances to shine in areas they love and, for teachers, reduce support for them to introduce the 'new' New Zealand Curriculum - one they are keen to implement.

Our children deserve better than being sacrificed by the hurried introduction of an idea that has been shown to fail in the countries where it has been introduced.

The best answer to National Standards would be to run proper trials to see if they do work with underachieving students before imposing them on all schools.

This is what Mary should be fighting for.

Mrs Tolley will go down as one of the disasters in education if her uninformed and simplistic views are imposed on teachers. The question is how strong will teachers be in resisting her reactionary ideas? We will find out next year.

‘May you live in interesting times’, the Chinese saying goes; or as Charles Dickens’s wrote about the Victorian Era, it is the ‘best of and the worst of times’.

Just as schools were becoming enthusiastic about implementing the 2007 New Zealand Curriculum the ‘new’ government is imposing its populist national standards in literacy and numeracy on schools; standards which have more than a whiff of the Victorian Era about them.

It all sounds simple enough. From next year all primary schools will have to test children against national standards in literacy and numeracy (reading writing and maths). Schools will have to report the results to parents in clear language, with suggestions on what each child needs to learn.

So what is the problem?

Well, like most simple solutions to complex problems, there is more to education than competency in the ‘three Rs’. And it is not that schools are currently neglecting them. Most primary schools already spend all morning on such skills leaving little time for other important learning areas. Those parents who assist in schools would attest to this but for many the cry of ‘back to basics’ makes equal sense and for populist politicians always a good vote catcher. Primary education suffers more than its fair share of scaremongering. Standards, it seems, are always falling without any real evidence. Many people feel there was a ‘golden era’ when all children learnt to read and write and do their sums but it is a hard era to pinpoint – particularly when you include the words ‘all children’.

It is time to move on from such polarization and name calling.Children deserve better from our nation’s leaders and shapers of opinion but it seems it is hard to shake off the legacy of Victorian thinking. Old habits of thought die hard. What we need are students ‘with the future in their bones’. As the Hebrew saying reminds us, ‘do not confine your children to your own learning for they were born in another time.’

The Government claims parents are overwhelmingly in favour of their standards but the Ministry’s empty rituals of consultative meetings were more explanatory than democratic. A recent NZCER report indicted parental support was lacking.

Are New Zealand students failing?

International tests show that New Zealand students do well in the areas the national standards are focusing on. The Minister’s argument is that standards will further improve student achievement and help teachers solve the problem of the worrying ‘achievement tail’. The trouble is that there is little research or evidence to back up such claims and in the two countries that have gone down this testing line (the UK and the US) their students do worse than ‘kiwi kids’.

Creating a crisis to solve?

What this emphasis on the need for national standards is doing is creating a crisis to solve that does not exist and diverting valuable teacher energy and time from implementing our new exciting curriculum. As Francis Nelson, President of the NZEI writes, ”league tables driven by simplistic data and complied for the ‘titillation’ of the ‘blame the teacher’ adherents will see the highly regarded New Zealand Curriculum turned on its head.” Kelvin Squire, a past president of the NZPPF, has written that ‘Tolley’s folly’, the national standards, have ‘sown a political seed that somehow or other we can’t trust the profession.’

Editorials have been one sided in their view on teachers, accusing them of self interest and being frightened of what the tests might show. Even the president of the School Trustees Association writes, “that those who are scaremongering now need to get over it.” Scaremongering obviously has a better ring to it than saying ‘those with viable educational views that run counter to the Government’s intentions’.

Not all is lost – let the teachers teach.

The editor of the Sunday Herald got well beyond the Government’s press releases in its editorial of October 25 headed, ‘Let the teachers teach not count’. “Everybody knows best about education,” the editor writes, “by having been to school … no one claims that their experience of driving a car confers any specialist authority in automotive mechanics.” He says, the announcement of the education standards was calculated to induce warm and fuzzy feelings in parents by capitalizing on the anxiety parents feel about their children’s education, which can be relied on for a rich source of political capital. “For the widely trumpeted fulfillment of an election pledge,” he says, “it is a bad look.” Teachers, he believes, have a right to question things that are not in the best interest of their students. They are right to bring to parents’ attention that there is so much assessment of learning going on that there isn’t any time for teaching.

These are not the only concerns of educators.

New Zealand teachers have a proud reputation for being innovative and creative teachers; a reputation that has been put at risk since the imposition of the 1986 National Curriculum. The 2007 New Zealand Curriculum replaces this previously overcrowded and unmanageable curriculum. The new curriculum has been welcomed by teachers and widely acclaimed internationally.

It is ironic that just when teachers are becoming enthusiastic about the possibilities of the new curriculum the current emphasis on national standards will divert their efforts and the students will be the real losers in this confusion

Dan Pink has written several best selling book on the future of work.His most latest book is Drive in which he Explores what motivates us to do our best work. Ideal remedial holiday reading for our limited Minister of Education and her tame lackeys who insist on waving big sticks at teachers to do as they're told. Pink would say, 'they are locked into the wrong century!'

As it turns out I ordered the book through Amazon and it arrived today but until I read it I will rely on an interview with Pink where he was asked to relate his ideas to education.

Pink's ideas reinforces my view that education, as it is currently structured, is past it 'use by date' being far too teacher dominated. Even the most liberal of our so called 'child centred ' primary schools spend inordinate time on the 'three Rs'. The reforms imposed on school the past decades have all but destroyed creative teaching and now teachers default mode has been influenced by standardized 'best practice' teaching. National Standard might well be the last straw causing teachers to say 'enuf is enuf'. I hold my breath. I worry that teachers have been habituated by all the pressure to be accountable , to measure and compare achievement, to narrow their curriculum and, in the process, are developing a bland McMac 'one size fit all' system unable to promote creative alternatives.

Pink explores what motivates us to do our best work and believes that the current carrot and stick approach will does more harm than good. The time has come, he says, 'To to tap into the deeply human need to direct our own lives to learn and create new things and to do better by ourselves and the world.... The 21stC requires us to upgrade autonomy, mastery and purpose'.

Pink book has a metaphor at the centre of it. It is the metaphor of the computer operating system. Pink says that businesses (and schools) and cultures have operating system too. Our first system ( Motivation 1) was built largely on our biological drive to satisfy our hunger and our survival. With the development of cooperative complex societies this basic system had to be modified (motivation 2) to restrain simply satisfying basic drives.

Motivation 2 was built around rewards and punishments -around 'carrots and sticks'. This was an ingenious system and Pink says it fueled the Industrial Revolution.

This system is now crashing because the kind of work asked of people today has changed - new dispositions are required to cope with greater complexity.

Motivation 3 is based on the drive to direct our own lives. The drive to get better at stuff that matters.The drive to connect ourselves to a cause larger than ourselves.

Running organisation using rewards and punishments is no longer enough and can actually do harm by distorting and narrowing activities - c.f National testing in schools.

Research, Pink says, shows that carrots and sticks work in a narrow band of circumstances and that if you want high performance on more creative tasks you have to have a different operating system built more on our internal drive to do interesting things and to do things that matters.

This bring us back to schools with their genesis in the industrial age -schools that by and large run on a 'carrot and stick mentality' (while trying to channel basic biological drives!).

'Schools', Pinks says, 'are still at 2.0 , they maybe haven't gotten all the updates'. He compares schools to some business that have experimented with flexible schedules giving people more autonomy.

Schools have been, and are still being, constantly reformed but all the talk seems to revolve around 'carrot and stick' motivation. Schools, Pink says' ought to know more about the differences between intrinsic motivation than almost anyone else.'

Students need to learn not for short term reward but that to do something worthwhile is the reward itself. All this performance pay talk for teachers is the wrong approach as is rewarding students or naming and shaming schools with standardized testing.

And Pink says extrinsic and intrinsic motivation cannot co-exist - the science , he says, that just isn't right.Kids who work for extrinsic rewards lose interest after gaining the reward - or get hooked on getting more rewards. This 'if you do this you will get this' has devastating effects on creativity.

Answering the question that if 'carrots and sticks' are removed from schools how would accounatbility be assured Pink believes that if people have autonomy they will use it well - it depends on the theory of human behaviour ( their operating system ) you believe in. People who believe in creativity and autonomy will actually do better work and actually want to be held accountable. It is all about creating the conditions of trust, respect and positive relationships.

Tell that to our current 'carrots and sticks' minister of education and far too many of our current managaement oriented principals.

Judging by standardized testing is a disaster waiting to happen Pink says. Teachers, he believes, need to be paid well and encouraged to focus on their jobs - most teachers he says 'just want to teach and do right by kids' but he does say principals need the power 'to get rid teachers who are duds'.

As for students who come from dire socio economic circumstances ( making up the so called 'achievement tail') where basic skills and the concept of being intrinsically motivated are often absent such students will need a bit of structure and some scaffolding to get there but unless such students achieve responsibility and autonomy they will still not be prepared for the world.

It is such ideas a true minister of education should be pursuing - ideas implicit in the 2007 New Zealand Curriculum rather than the reactionary 'carrot and stick approach' of her 'do it or else' National Standards. Her operating system believes in surveillance, measuring by numbers, imposed targets, comparisons, rewards and punishments. She is blithely unaware of the importance of the internal world of students and the importance of respectful relationships for all involved.

Our minister's approach is insulting to creative teachers. She needs to create learning cultures that respect both teachers and their students.

We can't mindlessly put up with a failing and flawed system based on outdated motivational theories forever? A system predicated on a desire and genuine success for all would involve a sweeping change in mindset for all involved so as to develop the individual gifts of all.

Teachers, it seems, are at a 'turning point' - will they have the confidence to fight for what is right and turn it into a 'tipping point'?

I wait to see.

2010 is shaping up to be year when schools have to face up to choosing between developing creative teaching beliefs or implementing imposed reactionary politically inspired ideology. The other alternative is to unthinkingly to go along to get along. If this tuns out to be the case it will be sad day for creative education and the 2007 New Zealand Curriculum.


As soon as primary teachers get themselves back to school in a couple of weeks they will have to face up to the issue of National Standards.

If the National Standards are accepted without even a trial then teachers will be aligning themselves with a system that will distort the education of their students. It will mean developing schools as being un-educational; a source of mis-education contributing to the growing school school failure rate.

The new government has nailed its banner to a standardised approach replacing the move towards personalisation and 21st Century thinking of the previous administration.

It is a clear choice between measurable efficiency of narrow range of targets and an education focusing on developing the attributes, talents and gifts of all students required to equip them to thrive in what will be a challenging future.

The Governments standards approach will alienate students who already find school difficult.All too often schools blame their students backgrounds as an excuse for school failure happily ignoring the role school have played in creating failure.

With an emphasis on standards the schools role in failure will become obvious. While standards focus on primary schools student alienation becomes obvious in years 7 to 10. This was the conclusion of Russell Bishop's Kotahitanga project ( University of Waikato) who, while writing about the experience of Maori students, found that school did not acknowledge student's culture and largely ignored their voice and identity. This alienation for many students begins the day school starts.

It is such students that American writer Kirsten Olsen identifies in her powerful book 'Wounded by School'. She writes that 'shouldn't the joy of learning, creativity and recognising the differences of students be more important than trying to push all students into a middle of the road mold and teaching for standardized testing?' She believes our current school system harms everyone and that there is a need to challenge the industrial age assumptions behind the institution of school that damages so many of our children.

Schooling, she writes, is itself the single most important component to destroying the joy of learning.

School that comply to the government's standardisation approach will be contributing to such wounding and neglect of student's intrinsic learning.

Simple as that.

We need to look at school failure with fresh eyes. For those who would like to gain a greater depth of understanding of the issue of school ought to visit at risk advocate Bill Pages at risk students site

Page believes that the process of failure begins when they are born into impoverished home experiences that cause initial entrance into compulsory schooling to be difficult. These multiple causes ( 'deficit theory') are well known but what is not acknowledged is that educators deny their own culpability in the failure process.

All students have an inbuilt desire to learn and all require encouragement, acceptance, achievement and satisfaction but all too often by our use of peer comparisons (ability grouping) fragile self images of such students are eroded. All students need to have their questions, queries and ideas valued but all too often such desires are replaced by the teacher's planned curriculum. All students need to have their individuality and idiosyncrasy valued but all too often , through teachers influence, students products ( art, writing , research) all illustrate blandness.

After years of such invisibility and frustration a sense of school failure results. When students experience years of not achieving school standards ( many of little interest to them) all the associated behaviour associated with failure results.

Children , writes Page, who begin school behind may never catch up. We need to develop a more creative and personalised approach. Recognizing the futility of it all they readily become kids who quit trying, learning, co-operating , following procedures, or behaving. With their 'loser' image students discover disobedience is preferable to showing stupidity.

School do everything but accept responsibility for the mismatch of students with their imposed curriculum. Educational powers that be created the problem of dysfunctional schooling and only they can solve it system wide.

The sad thing the answer to all this school induced failure is with us. Creative teachers have always known the way to ensure all students retain their joy of learning and it to such teachers we need to look to rather than imposing narrow standards.

Creative teacher know the importance of establishing a non judgemental respectful relationships with all their learners. They know the vital importance of valuing the thoughts, questions, talents and queries of all their students. They understand the importance of students culture and the importance of exploring the immediate environment as as a learning resource. They see their rooms as learning communities and their role as supporting and challenging their students to do their personal best. They appreciate for students to see the need for effort and practice. They encourage their students to do fewer things well and to, in the process, acquire the lifelong attributes and disposition the future will require. In all this they need to ensure that literacy and numeracy are developed in the context of real learning.

For many of our current schools this would turn the process of teaching upside down. Imposed 'best practice' teaching in literacy and numeracy has all but squeezed real learning out the window.

Teacher have chance to fight for creative teaching rather than selling their souls by accepting standards uncritically.

Creative teaching is worth fighting for - I for one will be happy to do my best.

'Good golly' says Mrs Tolley, '150000 failing children are asking us to save them by testing them to oblivion and branding them as below average'. Sir John Charmalot believes that, 'with big business and Auntie Herald on our side we can replace the nanny state with big brother know best. Working together we can destroy creative education once and for all'.


The truth of what is happening in schools to help all children achieve is being lost in by a cynical publicity campaign led by the government and assisted by the Auckland Herald and editors throughout the country. Read Kelvin Smythe's latest for more detail. Teachers are being told to do as they are told or else and are being unfairly scapegoated for school failure of students who enter school with little 'social capital' to take advantage of what is being offered. Teachers do their best. The system is the problem and standards are not the answer.

For an excellent crit of Auckland Herald see this blog by Russell Brown
The argument is really about if schools should be personalised to help all students achieve their talents and gifts, in the process of self realisation developing the competencies that they will require to thrive no matter what life throws at them, or should our system become more standardised so the products can be measured and blame apportioned for any failure.

The sad thing is that for two decades the powers that be have imposed formulaic 'best practices' on schools and required more and more testing. Creativity is already at risk. Managerialism has all but crushed teachers initiative and independence. National standards are the last straw.

Even testing guru John Hattie ( is for or against standards?) writes that 'applied uniformity across every school is a hopelessly crude way of raising student achievement and will result in teaching to the standards and narrowing of the curriculum'. What he says is the important thing 'is for children to be able to self assess their own progress and for teachers to give focused feedback. Most of all, he writes, 'students need a level of trust in classroom to admit out loud that they don't misunderstand something.'

It is respect and trust that is missing in the Minister's hard lined attitude as she happily discounts any contrary advice as 'mischievous' or 'taken into account'. Education is about working together and results in the building of 'social capital' of all involved - students, teachers and parents. Creative education builds on and extends the interests of the students and cannot be limited to success in literacy and numeracy as important as they are.

You get the impression it is either impose national standards or put up with no decent teaching of literacy and numeracy. Anyone who has visited a primary school would see the falseness of this position. Creative education is already being squeezed out by the current emphasis on literacy and numeracy.

The question we ought to ask about 'failing students' ( we know who they are) is why they can't read write and do maths at 15? Simply put they can't see the point of what is being offered. Why is this? How can we engage them? How can we make schooling more relevant? Why do so many children start so far behind at 5? When do students disengage? How important is the distressing home circumstances of the failing students? National's standards are a distraction to solving such issues and are more about a return to 'market forces' ideology.

Solving such problems requires a whole system approach not simplistic standards and blaming and shaming ideas that have already failed in other countries. Although New Zealand does have a a long 'achievement tail' it is important to appreciate that this is also the case in socially unequal countries particularly those that went down the market forces approach to politics and schooling.

It seems John Key see education as putting things into kids heads and then measuring what sticks - this is a 'banking' metaphor and appropriate for person who sees capital as something that can be accounted for. As for Ms Tolley she only has two or three programmed standardised answers which she repeats predictably. The complexity of teaching and learning is beyond her. Teaching is to be reduced to simplistic standardised ‘plunket’ graphs but with no farex available to fatten up kids only measuring them twice year. Maybe she should get management advice from McDonald's to assist her in developing this uniformity?

It does seem strange that the government happily overlooks the connections between the 20% of children living in poverty, the 20% failing in schools and the 20% ending up in prison?

This unfairness is where we ought to be paying attention?

If we follow the imported failed standards agenda we will see our school disintegrating under the triviality of measuring what we already know - akin to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. And, like the Titanic the rich and poor alike will pay the price if we don't place some real innovative thinking into the debate.

We need some real future thinking not a return to past failed ideas.

National's standards are well below average if judged educationally and not by populist politics!.

Who will want to a teacher in such a standardized future?


And an excellent contribution by Alfie Kohn debunking standards

Read this story about the damage of national testing.

And a short story about national standards from NZ

Intelligence testing on Ellis Island for immigrants entering the land of the free. Testing has had a long history sorting out people using doubtful measures. Nothing has changed it seems. Testing reflects the 'mindsets', or ideology, of those who set the tests.

I recently read about a book 'Wounded by School' and ordered it on Amazon. By chance I happen to read an online discussion about the very book.

It ties in well with the current standards debate.

The discussion centred on all those who have not found schooling to their liking . It seemed to sum up the sad story behind the phrase 'achievement tail'- a tail created by outdated mono cultural schools and by the political decisions that force citizens to live lives of poverty and then blamed for their situation.

That there is a real need to face up to the human destruction created by political decisions of the past was written passionately about by Kerre Woodham in one of her recent Herald on Sunday columns. She describes the actions of the mindless violence caused by gangs as young as eight or so. This is the result of the underclass created by decisions beyond the influence of individual citizens.

Introducing national standards will only add to the sense of failure we are creating in too many of our students from low socio economic schools.

Findlay McDonald, a Sunday Times columnist, writes that they are 'an updated version of the Victorian schoolroom where students have it drummed into them early as possible that they either successes or failures'. He continues that, 'national standards are a sentimental yearning for some imagined golden age when the three Rs ruled' .He continues, 'they will prove nothing more than what we already know - poor kids from poor backgrounds at poor schools will struggle, while comparatively privileged, middle and upper classes thrive regardless...the Minister is unable to present evidence to support the introduction of the national standards.'

Back to 'Wounded by School' comments.

The author says that kids take on the identities of being "smart" or"dumb" as a result of their experiences and that as teachers we lose track of the effect of schooling on kids. Teachers, she says, see the need to gain an education but, for all that, too many of our students still leave 'wounded'.

One contributor, a retired school superintendent, writes that 'teachers are force fed programmes with the only real concern being the raising of standardized test scores' and 'fears that ill-advised emphasis of the test being the end-and be-all is setting the country's future on a course of economic doom'. He writes about the pressure being put on teachers to perform and as a result many teachers are disheartened and worn down.

Is this the future for New Zealand?

The author writes that 'we as teachers have to seize hold of the profession. We need to move out of passively complaining about these polices, dry our eyes, stand up and get as mad as hell.'

Rather than testing students for achievement we ought to 'set growth targets around engagement for students' and the she would want 'every teacher to engage in an intensive professional training that defines what does powerful teaching and learning look like at our school'?


The author is skeptical about the viability of conventional classrooms and structures of schools as we live in them currently; she is talking about schools the USA. In particular she is urgently believes that we need to get rid of old fashioned high schools which she is amazed are still with us. She sees such dysfunctional schools as 'minimum security prisons'; to make them less 'wounding' is the immediate challenge; to make school less about control and domination; and less about atomisation and alienation. To do this teachers will have to face up to what is going on within schools and to look at the way power operates and who is being served by current arrangements.

If she had the power she would bring 'increased inquiry into all subjects until the senior year was really a series of (ideally) interdisciplinary open ended projects'...all this 'must increase the intrinsic motivation and optimizes the students effective learning skills'. Teachers, she says, need 'facilitate' and not 'deliver'; not to 'present' information but discuss critical and research topics. Students need to learn that real learning is often hard and involves struggle. Cognitive engagement -achieving 'flow' as as a learner - actually means being challenged but the task has to be relevant and we have to enjoy how we are learning.

To this she believes we need to have a national debate on the purpose of schooling.

Our current emphasis on standardization is wounding children -even those deemed successful. Students are unconsciously shaped by the school experiences they experience - or for many endure.

National standards will simply and efficiently 'wound' even more students creating in the process an growing number of disengaged, alienated and, all too often, angry citizens.

As teachers we should get as mad as hell.

I sure am.

I await the arrival of the book.

This slightly edited article by Alfie Kohn has permission to be reprinted as long as it is acknowledged and not sold for profit.Published in Education Week January 14th 2010. It could have been written about the situation in NZ. Visit Alfie Kohn's site.


Debunking the Case for National Standards
One-Size-Fits-All Mandates and Their Dangers
By Alfie Kohn


I keep thinking it can’t get much worse, and then it does. Throughout the 1990s, one state after another adopted prescriptive education standards enforced by frequent standardized testing, often of the high-stakes variety. A top-down, get-tough movement to impose “accountability”– driven more by political than educational considerations – began to squeeze the life out of classrooms, doing the most damage in the poorest areas.


By the time the century ended, many of us thought we had hit bottom – until the floor gave way and we found ourselves in a basement we didn’t know existed. I’m referring, of course, to what should have been called the Many Children Left Behind Act, which requires every state to test every student every year, judging students and schools almost exclusively by their scores on those tests, and hurting the schools that need the most help. Ludicrously unrealistic proficiency targets suggest that the law was actually intended to sabotage rather than improve public education.

Today we survey the wreckage. Talented teachers have abandoned the profession after having been turned into glorified test-prep technicians. Low-income teenagers have been forced out of school by do-or-die graduation exams. Countless inventive learning activities have been eliminated in favor of prefabricated lessons pegged to numbingly specific state standards.And now we’re informed that what we really need . . . is to standardize this whole operation from coast to coast.

Have we lost our minds? Because we’re certainly in the process of losing our children’s minds.

To politicians, corporate CEOs, or companies that produce standardized tests, this prescription may seem to make sense. (Notice that this is exactly the cast of characters leading the initiative for national standards.) But if you spend your days with real kids in real classrooms, you’re more likely to find yourself wondering how much longer those kids -- and the institution of public education -- can survive this accountability fad.

Let’s be clear about the latest development. First, what they’re trying to sell us are national standards. It may be politically expedient to insist that the effort isn’t driven by the federal government, but if all, or nearly all, states end up adopting the same mandates, that distinction doesn’t amount to much.

Second, these core standards will inevitably be accompanied by a national standardized test. When asked, during an on-line chat last September, whether that was true, Dane Linn of the National Governors’ Association (a key player in this initiative) didn’t deny it. “Standards alone,” he replied, “will not drive teaching and learning” – meaning, of course, the specific type of teaching and learning that the authorities require. Even if we took the advice of the late Harold Howe II, former U.S. Commissioner of Education, and made the standards “as vague as possible,” a national test creates a de facto national curriculum, particularly if high stakes are attached.

Third, a relatively small group of experts will be designing standards, test questions, and curricula for the rest of us based on their personal assumptions about what it means to be well educated. The official Core Standards website tries to deny this, insisting that the items all teachers are going to have to teach will be “based on evidence” rather than reflecting “individual beliefs about what is important.” It would be charitable to describe this claim as disingenuous. Evidence can tell us whether a certain method is effective for reaching a certain objective – for example, how instruction aligned to this standard will affect a score on that test. But the selection of the goal itself – what our children will be taught and tested on – unavoidably reflects values and beliefs. Should those of a single group of individuals determine what happens in every public school in the country?

Advocates of national standards tell us they want all students (by which they mean only American students) to attain excellence, no matter where (in our country) they happen to live. The problem is that excellence is being confused with entirely different attributes, such as uniformity, rigor, specificity, and victory. Let’s consider each in turn.

Are all kids entitled to a great education? Of course. But that doesn’t mean all kids should get the same education. High standards don’t require common standards. Uniformity is not the same thing as excellence – or equity. (In fact, one-size-fits-all demands may offer the illusion of fairness, setting back the cause of genuine equity.) To acknowledge these simple truths is to watch the rationale for national standards – or uniform state standards -- collapse into a heap of intellectual rubble.

To be sure, excellence and uniformity might turn out to be empirically correlated even if they’re theoretically distinct. But I know of no evidence that students in countries as diverse as ours with national standards or curricula engage in unusually deep thinking or are particularly excited about learning. Even standardized test results, such as the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), provide no support for the nationalizers. On eighth-grade math and science tests, eight of the 10 top-scoring countries had centralized education systems, but so did nine of the 10 lowest-scoring countries in math and eight of the 10 lowest-scoring countries in science.

So if students don’t benefit from uniformity, who does? Presumably corporations that sell curriculum materials and tests can reduce their costs if one text fits all. And then there are the policy makers who confuse doing well with beating others. If you’re determined to evaluate students or schools in relative terms, it helps if they’re all doing the same thing. But why would we want to turn learning into a competitive sport?

Apart from the fact that they’re unnecessary, a key premise of national standards, as the University of Chicago’s Zalman Usiskin observed, is that “our teachers cannot be trusted to make decisions about which curriculum is best for their schools.” Moreover, uniformity doesn’t just happen – and continue – on its own. To get everyone to apply the same standards, you need top-down control. What happens, then, to educators who disagree with some of the mandates, or with the premise that teaching should be broken into separate disciplines, or with the whole idea of national standards? What are the implications of accepting a system characterized by what Deborah Meier called “centralized power over ideas”?

The reasonable-sounding adjectives used to defend an agenda of specificity -- “focused,” “coherent,” “precise,” “clear” – ought to make us nervous. If standards comprise narrowly defined facts and skills, then we have accepted a controversial model of education, one that consists of transmitting vast quantities of material to students, material that even the most successful may not remember, care about, or be able to use.

Finally, what’s the purpose of demanding that every kid in every school in every state must be able to do the same thing in the same year, with teachers pressured to “align” their instruction to a master curriculum and a standardized test?
I once imagined a drinking game in which a few of those education reform papers from corporate groups and politicians were read aloud: You take a shot every time you hear “rigorous,” “measurable,” “accountable,” “competitive,” “world-class,” “high(er) expectations,” or “raising the bar.” Within a few minutes, everyone would be so inebriated that they’d no longer be able to recall a time when discussions about schooling weren’t studded with these macho managerial buzzwords.

But it took me awhile to figure out that not all jargon is meaningless. Those words actually have very real implications for what classrooms should look like and what education is (and isn’t) all about. The goal clearly isn’t to nourish children’s curiosity, to help them fall in love with reading and thinking, to promote both the ability and the disposition to think critically, or to support a democratic society. Rather, a prescription for uniform, specific, rigorous standards is made to order for those whose chief concern is to pump up the American economy and make sure that we triumph over people who live in other countries.

If you read the FAQ page on the common core standards website, don’t bother looking for words like “exploration,” “intrinsic motivation,” “developmentally appropriate,” or “democracy.” Instead, the very first sentence contains the phrase “success in the global economy,” followed immediately by “America’s competitive edge.”

If these bright new digitally enhanced national standards are more economic than educational in their inspiration, more about winning than learning, devoted more to serving the interests of business than to meeting the needs of kids, then we’ve merely painted a 21st-century façade on a hoary, dreary model of school as employee training. Anyone who recoils from that vision should be doing everything possible to resist a proposal for national standards that embodies it.

Yes, we want excellent teaching and learning for all -- although our emphasis should be less on student achievement (read: test scores) than on students’ achievements. Offered a list of standards, we should scrutinize each one but also ask who came up with them and for what purpose. Is there room for discussion and disagreement -- and not just by experts -- regarding what, and how, we’re teaching and how authentic our criteria are for judging success? Or is this a matter of “obey or else,” with tests to enforce compliance?

The standards movement, sad to say, morphed long ago into a push for standardization. The last thing we need is more of the same.

'While I am popular we can do whatever we like - just keep smiling'.


The new government is having a dream run.

Running up to the election they tapped into all the fears and prejudices of the public - crushing boy racer cars, locking up people forever in jail and, of course, introducing national standards in reading and mathematics.

This, plus a electorate grown increasingly tired of the previous government demeaned by those in opposition as leading us increasingly into a 'nanny state', has given them the mandate to put into action a range of simplistic solutions to complex problems.

The simplest solution to a complex problem is the governments answer to education and they couldn't have picked a better minister for the job! Our minister has small range of simplistic answers to any question asked of her.

Recently, in a amazing piece of 'spin' ( propaganda), our minister sorted out the facts from the fiction about national standards. 'Facts', it seems, are whatever the person in power wants them to be and 'fiction' is what other people believe to be facts.

So it boils down to the ministers opinions (and her unnamed lackeys*) versus the others with a wealth of experience who are happy to be identified.

Before the election the government spread ( shock horror) that one in five students leave school without reading, writing and maths skills and, worse still, these failing students made up a long low achievement tail 'robbing children of a bright future'.

The researched 'truth' ( Lester Flockton) shows this tail is not restricted to New Zealand and relates to children coming from disadvantaged socio economic situations. Before the election even our current Prime Minister had discovered that we have a growing underclass in New Zealand. How this underclass had been created is a question politicians would rather not discuss. Nor the relationship between economic hardship and failing learners.

Our minister wants to solve the problem of the failing students and 'her answer', is to impose national standards to find out what students need help and how much help they need. Parents will be told bluntly in 'plain english' using 'plunket' style graphs' where their child stands.

It seems we have exchanged the 'nanny state' for an autocratic 'big brother' knows best one. And we already know which students are failing and the schools they attend. The answer is not national standards, which have failed in the UK, but to improve the teachers capabilities in such schools and, even better, solving the problem of unemployment and hardship these children's parents suffer. The minister is going to get her tame technocrats to deliver better standards than were developed (and failed) in the UK - yeah right!

Our minister does not see national standards as labelling students - well I am pleased she does. I am not so sure that being told twice year, for eight years, that you are below average will be a positive experience for failing learners. And I am not so sure that being judged on a narrow ( if important ) range of traditional skills and in the process ignoring a child's special talents and strengths will do non-academic students any good.

The minister claims the 'their research' indicted parental support for their proposals but other research show almost the opposite - so much for 'truth'. It depends on what side of the political fence one stands.

This is all about political dogma not education - but that is an opinion. The minister counts such a views as mischievous!

She want professional support to implement her idea but she has no inclination to listen to their voices and concerns - we are moving well a way from democracy in this respect. Professional integrity is of no concern to our minister. Dogma , it seems, trumps integrity.

Opposition to the Ministers dogmatic point of view ( her truth) is dismissed by her shrilly as 'hysterical' or 'threats' from 'naysayers'. She twists the truth to say the reason why other advisers are to be disbanded and replaced by more literacy and maths adviser was at the request of teachers because 'they' said they needed more help in these areas. In the USA such advisers are seen as 'literacy Nazis' enforcing central government orders.

The legislation was rushed through Parliament, there is to be no trial period, no concessions, the minister know best. The parents want them ( read the government wants them and some parents agree) they will be imposed.

For those who speak out against her views she say 'please get your facts straight and stop trying to mislead parents'.

Is she for real?

This is the poorest education minister we have ever had - so much for Nationals standards - there are none.

* It seems Mary Chamberlain, Group Manager Ministry of Education, has been given this role - more a 'hospital pass'.It would be a shame if such a respected educationalist were to be finally remembered for the failing introduction of the imported concept of national standards!

A collection of ideas for creative education - somethings old and somethings new.

As our government has it eyes firmly fixed on the past standardized ideas it is important to reflect on what could be. And the amazing thing is that the alternative, creative teaching, is not new.

In the early 1900s writers like John Dewey were writing about that children learn from the environment they are exposed to and through worthwhile experiences they have. It was Dewey who said 'childen grow into people as they live today'.

The environment ( or culture) teachers create is vitally important. As Russell Bishop says, writing about the experiences Maori students in the Kotahitanga Project , 'culture counts'. Many students, in low decile schools, enter school ill equipped to cope with formalised impersonal education they experience - no matter how friendly it all looks. At school it is the teachers world that 'counts'.

What teachers need to do, from the earliest years, is to create an environment that captures children's interests; students need to be seen as active agents not recipients of teacher's curriculums. Students' interests, and their immediate environment, should be capitalised on. As Jerome Bruner wrote 'teaching is the canny art of intellectual temptation'. Bruner saw children as 'scientists working at the edge of their competence'. The current idea of pre-planning students activities is all too often counterproductive.

How teachers 'see' students is important.

In America Dewey's ideas were widespread but were eventually supplanted by an approach owing its genesis to scientific management -an approach being found successful in 'modern' factories as they introduced mass production. Schools today,particularly secondary schools, owe more to Henry Ford than John Dewey. Standardisation replaced potential diversity and individuality.

After World War Two in the UK and later in New Zealand child centred education regained centre stage at the primary levels. Elwyn Richardson's inspirational book, 'In the Early World ' was published during this time.In the 1970 an 'open education movement' continued the trend but eventually, by the 1980S, they were all replaced by more traditional programmes.

It seemed, with the introduction of the New Zealand Curriculum in 2007 student centred learning things were changing.

Then along came the standards and creativity once again is now at risk.

Standardisation is to replace personalisation.

Creative educators place great emphasis on assisting students to interpret their own and class experiences through their senses and their imagination and, following any experience, to express what they have discovered. The concept of valuing student's 'voice' and identity is vital - standardisation asks the opposite as students are measured against imposed standards.

Such creative teaching is already rare in our primary schools.

In creative schools students learn how to interpret any experience through a range of frameworks ( learning areas) - as in their preschool years all learning is integrated.

Literacy and numeracy are seen as important but as a means to an end. Today Primary classrooms focus almost all their energy on these two areas and the introduction of standards will just cement this bias. Any idea of multiple intelligences is bi and large ignored. Students succeed or fail on their ability in literacy and numeracy only .

How to interpret experiences using a range of frameworks - to see as an artist, a scientist, a poet, a writer , a mathematician, a musician, a dancer, a historian - all must be taught. It is such areas that students will find their passions ; area of exploration that those involved feel deeply.

By doing 'fewer things well', with the assistance of 'teachers as creative coaches', students learn the importance of effort and perseverance, the to and fro of the creative process, and the intrinsic satisfaction of 'doing things well'. Creative teachers believe that through such intrinsic success students attitudes can be transformed - with sensitive teaching all students can gain a 'feeling for' whatever they are doing.

Standards will tell teachers nothing about students' attitudes -and they are to be limited to reading, writing and mathematics. Learning cannot be limited to water tight compartments.

Creative teacher value imagination over conformity and the work on display illustrates this idiosyncrasy. Many classrooms celebrate formulaic conformity -even in such a creative area as art. All too often 'best practice ' teaching has trumped student creativity. Students are limited to working at the edge of the teachers competence. Students need to be helped to judge how successful they have been by referring to past efforts not teacher tests or standards.

This illusion of certainty is no way to equip students for an evolutionary future. Students need to develop faith in their own ideas, to value their intuition, to be spontaneous and to see possibilities, not to looking over their shoulder for teacher approval.

This dealing with uncertainty is the essence of creativity and it at odds with the misguided certainty of standards. Learners are boundary breakers.

Creative teachers see, when students are truly engaged, students inventing their learning identities through the tasks they undertake. The tasks we involve our students in must be chosen with care if we want to avoid students disengaging from their own learning and be coming part of the 'achievement tail' of lost learners.

It this vision of creative education that has inspired me over the decades. When creative teachers network with each other such creativity will become contagious. Standards may be having their turn in the sun but they are too fragile to last as they will destroy the creative spirit which is the basis of learning and life.

Each student desires to be recognised as an individual because of their own unique backgrounds and each student needs to learn how to contribute to their community - this is what teaching is all about. Or ought to be. We don't want 30 plus identical products - school are not factories.

Learning is process of discovery for both teachers and their students and it is as much about feeling and relationship as it is about thinking or knowing.

John Dewey had it right all those years ago. It time for Henry Ford and his modern day 'one size fits all' standard followers to move over. Students have amazing potential if placed in nurturing and challenging environments.

It is a respectful environment and quality experiences, not standards, that are needed, if the joy of learning is not to be crushed.

We have a problem in our schools - it is one of disengagement which is at a worrying level at years 7 to 10.

The government with its popular mandate believes the answer is to do with poor teaching of literacy and numeracy in primary schools and intends to introduce the failed concept of standards against the wisdom of highly respected educationalists, the Primary Principal's Federation and the primary teacher union.

I had hoped that common sense would prevail and that at least a trial would be set up but it seems not. Yesterday the Prime Minister made it clear the standards are to be imposed this year and that school Boards that did not comply would be sacked.

And this from a political party that believes in initiative, freedom and individual responsibility. As I see it it is the the worst case of political interference ( social engineering) or a government imposing a centralized agenda on schools. State socialism of the worst kind - free market Stalinism.

Students are failing, there is no doubt about this; we do not need national standards to find out who that are and we know that the worrying problem of student disengagement increases between the ages of 12 and 15 or so. Imposing literacy and numeracy standards in primary schools will not solve this problem - it will make it even worse by distorting the learning experiences of students and distracting the time and energy of teachers.

What is really required is some rethinking of the school system which is just not possible to educate all the students in its present arrangement. The joy of learning, which all students are born with, is lost as students 'progress' through the system.

Standardisation might have worked in an industrial age but the world has changed dramatically and what is now required is the develop the creativity and initiative and individuality of all students. We need a school system that centres on helping each student develop their unique talents - naturally this has to include literacy and numeracy.

What is required is a personalised approach to learning from an earl;y age.Even primary schools the past decades have lost the creativity and have fallen into the trap of standardized or formulaic 'best practice' learning. The problem comes to a head in early secondary school when non academic students begin to lose interest.

Retaining all students interest in and joy of learning is the real challenge.

A recent survey in the UK slams schools.

'Many British adults say they did not realise their true potential until years after they had left school. A survey of 2000 people found on that, on average, they cited 22 as the age they found their niche in life.Nearly half of those surveyed felt they were regarded as average or poor students while they were at school. Of those, 15 percent they never really got the chance to discover their talent in the classroom because their teacher had written them off as failures.'

How will imposing national standards fix this?

Standards will mean that all students will be assessed twice a year and recorded as below, average or above average. As is is not possible for everyone to be above average students will continue to disengage from their own learning. This will be made worse by the ignoring of their special talents in the process. This is what has happened in the two countries that have developed such an approach - the UK and the US - both performing far worse that NZ!

If schools accept the imposition of the conformist standards then I am out of helping such schools but will remain as an advocate for teacher creativity.

For educators there is a choice to be made that will require leadership and courage.

Already those in the Ministry have learnt to dance to the tune of the new masters selling their integrity in the process as have those who deliver contracts for the Ministry.

Are schools next to cave in in this brave new 'big brother knows best' standardized world?