The independent research into national standards

Whale Oil blogged how media uncritically reported an NZEI media release as news, including this line:

3News has the head­line: NZEI begins inde­pen­dent assess­ment of National Stan­dards [empha­sis mine]

And the release says:

A teacher union is fund­ing inde­pen­dent research into the impact of the new National Stan­dards in schools. …

“Given the absence of a trial of National Stan­dards and the deep con­cerns the pro­fes­sion and school com­mu­ni­ties have, NZEI has decided to fund this research in a bid to get robust evi­dence about the impact of National Stan­dards on teach­ing and learn­ing,” he said.

The project is being run through the Wilf Mal­colm Insti­tute for Edu­ca­tional Research at the Uni­ver­sity of Waikato and is headed by Prof Mar­tin Thrupp.

Both Whale and I have been blessed with the psychic ability of Deb Webber and Ken Ring and we can predict that this research will conclude that national standards are a disaster and have a hugely detrimental impact on teaching and learning.

Well actually we can’t predict the future. Instead Whale just used Google:

Hmmm… I won­der if this is the same “inde­pen­dent Mar­tin Thrupp that has railed against national stan­dards in March 2010, and is it the same Mar­tin Thrupp who is very active on the national Stan­dards protest site, includ­ing this blog post about how to get trac­tion in the media against National Stan­dards and the same mar­tin Thrupp who sent an email of sup­port to the NZPF for their action against National Stan­dards?

I’m now awaiting the Government of Libya to announce they have appointed independent human rights expert Muammar Muhammad al-Gaddafi to lead independent research into whether the Government of Libya has breached any human rights.