Focus on Test Results Can Be Harmful to Student Learning

Posted on Saturday August 28, 2010

Students show greater motivation, are better behaved, are more likely to be independent and strategic thinkers, and achieve better results when teachers are not obsessed by grades. >> Read on...

New School Results in England Show Students Were Drilled to Pass Tests

Posted on Saturday August 14, 2010

Primary school results just published in England provide an interesting insight on how standardised tests used for school accountability lead to inflated test scores and mislead about the school quality and progress in student learning. >> Read on...

The New York Bubble Bursts

Posted on Friday August 6, 2010

The miraculous test results achieved in New York City in recent years were a mirage. The city’s test results have plummeted under new state standards implemented to stop test score inflation and bogus results. >> Read on...

War Declared on New York’s Phony Test Results

Posted on Sunday August 1, 2010

New York state education officials finally vow to end the phony test results in the state and New York City. >> Read on...

New York Test Standards are Revealed as Too Low

Posted on Saturday July 24, 2010

New York’s amazing test results have been exposed as fraudulent in a study by researchers from Harvard and New York universities. Julia Gillard, take note. >> Read on...

SOS Calls for My School to be Scrapped

Posted on Thursday July 8, 2010

Save Our Schools has called for the My School website to be scrapped in a 125-page, five-part submission to the Senate Education Committee inquiry into reporting school literacy and numeracy test results. >> Read on...

Published School Results and League Tables are Misleading and Unreliable

Posted on Monday July 5, 2010

A new research paper published by Save Our Schools disputes the Federal Government’s claims that publishing school results on the My School website will better inform parent choice of school. The paper shows that published school results and league tables are misleading and unreliable as a guide to school quality. >> Read on...

The Alchemy of School Results

Posted on Wednesday June 30, 2010

Published school results are a modern-day form of alchemy. They bear no relationship to reality as schools more and more manipulate their results to look better. >> Read on...

Does Competition Improve Performance?

Posted on Sunday June 27, 2010

Does competition improve performance? An interesting experiment suggests that it encourages cheating, especially by low performers. >> Read on...

Publishing School Results and League Tables Harm Education

Posted on Friday June 25, 2010

Far from improving education, publication of school results and league tables are likely to significantly harm education. Overseas studies show that they narrow the curriculum, distort teaching, reduce collaboration and increase inequity in education, among other effects. >> Read on...

Publication of School Results Does Not Improve Student Achievement

Posted on Thursday June 24, 2010

A new SOS research paper reviews the major studies on the impact of publishing school results, school accountability measures and policies to promote greater choice and competition between schools. It shows that the Government’s claim that publishing school results will improve student achievement is not substantiated by the evidence. >> Read on...

The Great School Accountability Hoax

Posted on Monday June 21, 2010

School accountability in the United States is a great hoax according to Diane Ravitch. >> Read on...

Ministers Admit that Security for NAPLAN Tests is Inadequate

Posted on Friday June 18, 2010

Australian education ministers have conceded that security for the NAPLAN tests is inadequate and needs to be improved. But as long as NAPLAN has high stakes attached to it the cheating and rorting will continue and My School will continue to mislead about school performance. >> Read on...

New York’s Declining Standards Exposed

Posted on Saturday June 12, 2010

Julia Gillard’s much admired New York City school reporting system is a mockery of accountability and transparency. The cut-off scores for the proficiency standard have been reduced in recent years. Now, it is revealed that students are getting credits for wrong answers and no answers in the state tests. >> Read on...

Rorting and Cheating is now the Rule with NAPLAN

Posted on Saturday May 29, 2010

Australia has entered a new era of rorting and cheating of NAPLAN test results because of the intense pressure placed on schools to improve their test scores and rankings on school league tables. It means that the whole national assessment and reporting system will be corrupted. >> Read on...

Intensive Test Practice Takes Over the Classroom

Posted on Saturday May 22, 2010

Intensive test practice took over the classroom in the lead-up to the NAPLAN tests. It came at the expense of time spent on other curriculum areas not subject to testing and time spent on deeper learning skills. >> Read on...

An Innovative Way to Cheat on School Results

Posted on Thursday May 20, 2010

An innovative way to cheat on school results adds to the growing evidence of cheating and rorting of school results to improve school league tables rankings. It demonstrates yet another policy implementation failure of the Rudd Government. The Federal Education Minister failed to provide adequate security for the NAPLAN tests. >> Read on...

Cheating on NAPLAN Tests Will Only Increase

Posted on Wednesday May 19, 2010

Cheating by schools in the NAPLAN tests will increase because of the “high stakes’ involved in publishing school NAPLAN results on My School and the publication of school league tables in the media. >> Read on...

Encouraging Students to Stay Away on Test Day is a Rort to Increase School Test Scores

Posted on Sunday May 16, 2010

Last week, many schools bent the rules about exemptions from NAPLAN by contacting parents to suggest they keep their children home during the tests. Schools improperly exploited the exemption procedures to exclude lower achieving students from the tests. >> Read on...

Gillard Concedes Under the Collective Pressure of Teachers

Posted on Sunday May 9, 2010

The threatened teacher boycott of the national literacy and numeracy tests forced the Federal Minister for Education to agree to set up a working party to review the My School website. >> Read on...

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