Australian Teacher Warns About New York

An Australian teacher who worked in New York has warned about the dangers of following their system of high stakes testing and  school rankings.

Education Minister Julie Gillard has repeatedly expressed her admiration for New York’s chancellor of school education Joel Klein and his testing regime which gives schools a single number score, grades them between A and F and allows them to be ranked on their scores in league tables.

But in a new video union member and teacher Mary Ellen-Betts said her time working in schools in the Bronx convinced her that Australia had nothing to learn from approach taken in the city.

She said the whole focus in schools in disadvantaged areas was trying to improve test scores – an approach that narrowed the curriculum and undermined teacher collegiality.

“It wasn’t about teaching kids to be more literate, more numerate, it was about improving the number,” she says.

Click here to link to the video - here Ms Gillard claims the approach in New York is working, evidenced by improved test scores.

But it was recently revealed that passing grades had been dropped substantially to make it easier for students. The New York Times reported the threshold for passing the 7^th grade maths test decreased so much students who guessed the answers stood a good chance of moving to the next grade.

In addition recent national exams showed New York students had made no notable progress.

In state exams 80 per cent of eight graders had met learning standards in maths, a jump from 59 per cent in two years. However national tests showed only 34 per cent were proficient, up from 30 per cent in 2007. Fourth grade students actually performed worse than in 2007.

A parent in New York Martha Foote who is a member of the group Time Out from Testing, said there was widespread opposition to Mr Klein’s approach.

She said the granting of a single letter grade for schools was “demeaning”, and the fact that 97% of elementary and middle schools received an A or a B in 2009 was “further proof of how invalid and useless these grades are”.