5:1 support for national standards

The Herald reports:

Like it: 73 per cent
Hate it: 14 per cent

This is a Nielsen online poll of Herald readers. Not as reliable as a phone poll, but I doubt the results would change a lot if it was.

The key findings:

Those in favour of national standards:

YES – 73.2%
NO – 13.8%
DON’T KNOW – 13%

Do you understand how the new system works?

FULLY – 11.9%
PARTIALLY – 61.8%
NOT AT ALL – 26.2%

The effect of national standards on your child:

GOOD – 53.9%
BAD – 36.5%
NONE – 9.5%

Will standards create school ‘league tables’ for parents to plan their child’s schooling?

YES – 56.3%
NO – 17.1%
DON’T KNOW – 26.6%

Would that be a bad thing?

YES – 38.8%
NO – 47.9%
DON’T KNOW – 13.4%

John Roughan also writes:

This week the New Zealand Educational Institute, the union that protects these people’s jobs, has put a bus on the road to oppose new national standards of reading, writing and maths that would be tested and the results reported in a way everyone could understand.

It is the last bit the NZEI really hates. Schools already test kids constantly for their own purposes but they are not supposed to share the results with parents. They’ll provide your child’s test scores if you know to ask but they’d rather you didn’t.

Roughan correctly ascertains that this is a battle about reporting, not about testing. Should parents get told how well their kids are doing in clear language? Labour and the unions say no.

All of this is anathema to educational theorists and the teachers’ unions that want us to believe no school is better than any other, no teacher weaker than any other, and no child fails in the system they control.

And they do control it. State education is a law unto itself. Industries are normally answerable either to voluntary paying customers or to elected governments depending on how they are financed.

The NZEI seems to think the only role for the Government is to shut up and pay the salaries of their members.