More complaints about the Australian school compulsory national testing program NAPLAN

If you track back through earlier posts you will find more detail on NAPLAN (National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy).

A couple of Queensland tertiary educators were seem recently on TV raising all the negatives about the NAPLAN program.  Stuff like teachers teaching to the test and minimal evidence that NAPLAN is leading to Australian students improving their literacy and numeracy performance.

Such criticism always causes me to go to back to my basic strategies for improving literacy and numeracy.  I would use NAPLAN as a school principal to show where a student sits in relation to their age cohort, but even more crucial I would ensure that the following occurs in my school community whether it be a primary school (elementary school in the USA) with generalist class teachers or a secondary school (high school in the USA) with specialist subject teachers.

Strategy #1:   Teachers must be given the opportunity to sit and talk with one another about the maths and english language syllabuses to ensure that they are making common interpretations of what these syllabuses require. I have proved that this is effective inservice from which teachers develop common understandings of what each syllabus learning outcome means and what evidence they would accept that a student has mastered a prescribed outcome.  This latter agreement is in effect a standards setting exercise.  Teachers move through the syllabus prescribed outcomes very quickly in such discussion situations.

Strategy #2:  For prescribed learning outcomes that can be deemed essential for functional literacy and numeracy I would have a policy whereby each student has to show mastery of these essential outcomes that are also prerequisites for the new learning to come. Mastery means demonstrating that they have fully achieved a prescribed outcome over several spaced assessments for what that outcome requires.

In previous posts I have provided much detail about these two strategies to show that they work in a practical and effective school community.  The politicians who cry out for Australian students to rank high in international tables for literacy and numeracy probably wouldn't tolerate these strategies or should I say understand them.  They want the pressure of NAPLAN to drive teachers to greater efforts.

Once again I rest my case.

May the Force be with you!


GD