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Teachers everywhere should be giving Jane Caro a standing ovations!
What a great advocate for public education.

If politicians had set out to do something to do more damage to drive down the morale of the teachers the couldn't have done better. Pernicious term quality teacher they should wash their mouth out with soap.

Declining results are due to declining moral of teachers. What has more effect on students than the declining moral of teachers???

We need to give teachers more time to hone their teaching skills and enjoy teaching. We need to stop ramping up accountability(Simon Birmingham) Because they are filling in forms instead of coming up with creative teaching.

How do we fix it. Some starting points.

Areas to fix

Reports

Accountability

Assessment

#Stop current reporting.
Parents don't understand most of it. They are the clients - ask them what they would like to know and provide that. Having ask parents of Primary School kids what they want - the list goes something like this..

I would like to know my child is happy and what he/she is enjoying what he/she is good at.

I would like to know where he/she needs support maybe one or 2 things I could help with

I would like to get updates more often so I can deal with things along the way and not let them escalate. The current reports seem like a 'fait accompli' - I would like them to be less formal.

#Reporting Engage the Parents and reduce teacher workload.

With current technology it is easy to update parents on great things that are happening with their child at school, and also to nip problems in the bud by getting onto them quickly.

Programs like Class Dojo (FREE) Allows photo and video sharing directly from iPad or iPhone(or android etc) with parents - allows immediate communication with parents at the click of a button.

NO PAPERWORK - all recorded, instant and easy.

This engages parents and makes them feel part of the community, with a focus on their child, build school parent relationships, every study shows that parent engagement improves student performance. Here's a bit on that http://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/2015/11/30/engaging-families-is-key-to-improving-student-achievement-in-school)

#Assessment

Kill Naplan - a more stressful obnoxious process for children I can't imagine. And it is also proven to detrimental to children's learning and certainly heightens student anxiety. It is known to be disruptive with many schools and teachers teaching for the test. Better models around the world include the Finish no-test model.

There are no mandated standardized tests in Finland, apart from one exam at the end of students’ senior year in high school. There are no rankings, no comparisons or competition between students, schools or regions. Finland’s schools are publicly funded. The people in the government agencies running them, from national officials to local authorities, are educators, not business people, military leaders or career politicians. http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/why-are-finlands-schools-successful-49859555/?no-ist

Naplan needs to go. (You just wonder who is making a big score out of this in printing and marking this test - probably an ex politician on the gravy train - so it maybe hard to dynamite)

Replace it with what teachers do best assessment along the way incorporating gamification with digital marking, and downloadable results like KAHOOTS https://getkahoot.com No one gets anxious, bites their nails or worries about it. But kids do try hard, they do study, and the answers are immediate - so learning occurs along the way with downloadable results for all students. There are lots of these options.

#Accountability

Just based on work samples and assessments. A lot of teacher time is wasted on data entry. this is not teacher work, they should be working with kids and teaching. Primary school should involve informal reporting + specialist who assess individual student progress against standards in relax informal situations once a year and enter this data. Leaving the teacher free to teach(this does happen with limited students now). Another option is always useful for a teacher.

#Professional Development

Sure more professional development is fabulous but in a professional learning environment professionals develop. If teachers were freed of the paperwork there would be more time for peer to peer discussion and development, staff meeting could be dedicated to PD, with visiting speakers and tutors, or videos and topics for discussion.

What do you think? Jane Caro has nailed it?
Now let's fix it.
http://tinyurl.com/zfde99l