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National testing is coming

We always knew that the ridiculous system devised for collecting data would collapse, and it has.

National will stagger on with national standards to save face, but it is planning to introduce national testing.

National testing, of course, is the curriculum killer.

A networkonnet reader e-mailed asking about a request she had received from NZCER for year 1 and 2 students to take part in a process for revising e-asTTle writing assessment.

I had been waiting for this one.

My response to the reader was: it’s national testing.

It’s all on.

If national testing was to happen, the year 1 and 2 e-asTTle writing was the one they had to revise.

Enquiries to reliable sources confirmed my conclusion – yes, it’s for national testing.

Would someone with more time available than me, perhaps a researcher from NZEI, make a collection of dire warnings and solemn promises made by the bureaucracies and the minister about national testing.

Once national testing is confirmed, principals should get this information to the parents encouraging them to vow to withdraw children from such a venomous education development.

In an overnight development, I spoke to a ministry source who said that the line from the ministry will be that the asTTle revision is simply a move from the ministry to make available to schools a better evaluation tool for use in national standards. However, the real motivation is to implement a form of national testing; NZCER knows this and is unhappy about it.

My recommendation is that the NZEI and NZPF request schools not to participate in the asTTle revision. Without spelling it out, there are all sorts of advantages for doing this in respect to the national standards' campaign, as well as the obvious advantage of stopping a definite move towards national testing.