On the marketplace of ideas
Focus-group-by-media and the Australian standardised testing regime
A common frustration for Australian school leaders and teachers has been the way that COVID-19 policy has been rolled out first by media. Schools have been trying to follow the state of play via commercial media outlets rather than their professional orgs and have been scrambling to implement policy on the fly. Sadly, this has become normal and it’s interesting to see curriculum policy going the same way.
I remember getting a call during remote learning last year, to prepare me for the possibility that the entirety of the year’s HSC results might be on me and my department. English results are a pretty accurate predictor of ATAR and at that time it was looking likely that the HSC examinations might run in a very limited form. The SMH reported on this, with comments by various interested parties, but with nobody outright owning the idea. It was pretty clear to me at the time that the idea came from somewhere, most likely a leak. But then I quickly got to wondering how and why leaks occurred. It’s a very neat way to gauge the temperature on a radical (or even non-radical) idea: polling and policy by media.
ACARA have announced changes to NAPLAN, with a long overdue reduction in wait times for NAPLAN results (Australia’s national standardised test for literacy and numeracy). In the independent sector, companies like AAS have seen a commercial opportunity to bridge this gap with fast-turnaround diagnostics. I don’t know the ins and outs of why it has historically taken months and months for teachers to get diagnostic data but it seems like it’s now too little too late. NAPLAN has lethally mutated into a kind of Amazon Marketplace for school shopping. (Some) parents can exercise their choice to enrol their child in a high performing school, no matter that these schools are quite possibly also selecting for strong NAPLAN performers, an idea that’s quite plausible in light of Sally Larsen’s recent research.
The latest lethal mutations floated were the addition of creative and critical thinking assessments, to be potentially added to the NAPLAN suite by ACARA. These ideas seem not to have proven popular in the marketplace of ideas, and have since been abandoned. But ‘optional’ civics and citizenship, and digital literacy assessments have been added. These results won’t be made publicly available but it does make one wonder whether schools are being subliminally invited to be a part of ACARA’s focus group tactics. What will the uptake be? Will it eventually slide into the compulsory testing regime? Will some schools add their results to their marketing offerings? Is this a way to float the possibility of other amorphous skills tests down the track?
Meanwhile, we have very little data on what works. These case studies by ACARA seem to simply add up to the advice to ‘be good at all the things.’ It’s difficult to extrapolate what aspects of this pedagogical salad have been influential. Is the mess of qualitative data meant to bury the news that literacy and numeracy take time, expertise and money? With about 11 years of data and vast amounts of human and actual capital, this is ostensibly the best sense that can be made of what successful schools are doing. The SMH has reported on “the secrets” of high performing schools, but concede that “only limited details of high-performing schools were available in advance of the data being uploaded.” Apparently the formula is actually still secret. But the leaders interviewed do show that when principals and sectors invest time in intervention (which usually also means money), success is to be had. Who knew?
So all this leaves more questions than answers. Are the new testing regimes just another product line? Does each new product further justify the existence of our top-heavy edu-bureaucracy? Are new tests just new marketing tools for schools? Is NAPLAN a stick without a carrot? Do we already know what works? But then are we hesitant to clearly identify and admit that it’s about funding intervention? Will ACARA make a genuine investment in creating incisive case studies that will help schools improve, given their vast capabilities and reach?
To be clear, I am not anti-NAPLAN. I just think it’s one of the missed opportunities of the last 10 years and in danger of eating itself. It’s time to ask questions about its purpose. If education is now a marketplace of ideas, it might be worth considering who is buying. Is education really serving the market (media, parents, voters) or students and the teachers who have learning at the heart of what they do?