Educational Readings - By Allan Alach
Yesterday’s Special Edition, highlighting the Cambridge Primary
Review, has been well received around the world, helping to connect the
international campaign against GERM.
This includes this comment from Robin
Alexander in an email to Phil Cullen:
‘That's
terrific. Many thanks,
Sir Robin Alexander |
Best
wishes from Chile (where there's huge interest in the Cambridge Primary
Review).
Robin’
I welcome suggested articles, so if you come across a gem, email it
to me at allan.alach@ihug.co.nz.
This week’s homework!
Montessori: The Missing Voice in the Education Reform
Debate
These two links need no introduction.
The
Data-Driven Education Movement
A comprehensive debunking of this GERM that
is infecting education all over:
‘Being
data-driven is only useful if you have a strong theory by which to navigate;
anything else can leave you heading blindly toward a cliff.’
How
to save taxpayers billions of $$ — really
Marion Brady arguing for the use of sampling
as the best means of determining effectiveness of pupil learning.
This section, while US focussed, is very
applicable elsewhere. Readers, wherever they are, will be very familiar with
this.
What’s
the education-test manufacturer complex’s long-term strategy, as coordinated by
the American Legislative Exchange Council?
(1) Invent an education emergency and make skillful use of the mainstream
media to push it.
(2) Attack the legitimacy of public education by destroying trust in its most
obvious representatives — teachers.
(3) To make manipulation easy, centralize decision-making for standards and
accountability at the highest possible level.
(4) Work behind the scenes with politicians from both political parties,
wealthy foundations, and Wall Street types to push vouchers, charters, and
funding for anything public that can be profitably privatized.
(5) Call congressional hearings on the matter and invite to testify only those
“educators” and think-tank “experts” who — if they taught long enough to
understand what they were doing — have long since forgotten it.
(6) Dazzle the continuous stream of new, young, inexperienced teachers with
slick, colorful, ready-made instructional materials heavy with current jargon
about it being “data driven,” “child-centered,” “research-based,” “technology
enabled,” “blended,” “aligned with the new Common Core Standards. ”
Testing
in kindergarten: whatever happened to story time?
‘Chicago
kindergarteners could spend a third of their school year taking standardized
tests’
A warning for the rest of infected world
from the USA, remembering that their kindergarten is for five year olds.
Five-year-olds
put to the test as kindergarten exams gain steam
Another article on the same topic.
Survey
Finds that NAPLAN Has a Detrimental Effect on Education
Those who do not learn from history are
doomed to repeat it. Australia now finding out what USA and England have
already learnt - GERM damages education.
Audit
Blasts Lack of Oversight of Charter Spending
Those who do not learn from history are
doomed to repeat it, Part 2. As the New Zealand government moves to pass
legislation to establish charter schools, there is increasing concern about the
lack of oversight. Maybe the government, as well as blindly following the GERM
prescription, should also read articles such as this one from Diane Ravitch.
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