Equity - the real issue in falling education standards.

Are we burying our heads or is equity the real issue in falling standards?

There is an increasing gap in Australia between the rich and the poor. It has been suggested that the recent federal budget will further increase inequality in Australia. In Australia and Britain, as of 2007,  the wealthiest 1% of the population earned 20% of all income. In Canada the top 1% earned 37% while America set the bar at an alarming 47%. According to Richard Wilkinson, these advanced societies are not only less equitable but have greater problems, not only in wealth distribution, but also in educational standards, health, substance abuse, social problems, and consequently have have larger prison populations. 

This situation is typically reflected in the educational performance of the Australian states and territories. It is not surprising that the most equitable states do better on PISA and national tests while the states and territories that have a bigger gap between rich and poor and lower educational opportunity do less well.  Despite this inequality, the Australian government's response is the promotion of a market driven approach whereby public schools will be able to have more autonomy in such matters as the hiring and firing of staff and possibly with staff renumeration. However, this can only increase the inequity of our education system and result in the further decline of our educational standards.

The OECD conducts a series of international student surveys in more than 70 countries to assess the knowledge and skills of 15 year olds in Mathematics, Science and Reading.  The PISA results show that in the year 2000 Australia performed 2nd only to Finland in reading on the PISA international tests. The Finnish school system has been less affected by family backgrounds than in most other countries and has been considered to be one of the most equitable among the OECD countries.  However, even in Finland, there is an increasing inequality and, as a consequence their PISA test scores are slipping. Australia's scores on PISA are also noticeably in decline, in 2012 the reading scores slipped to tenth position. According to Peter Job the performance of Australian education has been put at risk due to a politicisation of education and a declining respect for teacher professionalism. 

There has been a push for the publishing of league tables for the national testing (NAPLAN) results and also a push for higher performance pay. This is despite international evidence that such schemes are less than productive. There seems to be an assumption that poor teacher quality is the reason for falling standards. The continued promotion of this assumption can only lead teachers to believe that they are not appreciated and deter others from entering the teaching profession. Instead of creating a system that rewards some and punishes others it would be better to remove the inequalities within our society and in the education systems. 

See the links below for more on the topic:

Joe Hockey's budget beyond the concept of fair: The Age newspaper:  1st June, 2014

A Teacher's guide to PISA reading literacy

Australia's PISA slump is big news but what is the real story?

Why markets cannot improve education http://theconversation.com/why-markets-cant-deliver-excellence-and-equity-in-schools-25711

Blind ideology putting Australia's education at risk.

Washington Post - A response from Finland

ABC news http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-10-14/1-in-8-australians-living-in-poverty/4312154
China's response

Richard Wilkinson TED Talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZ7LzE3u7Bw

Increasing gap between the rich and the poor in Australia http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/latest-news/aussies-trapped-by-disadvantage/story-fn3dxiwe-1226445744314

A decade of lost action in reading: Let's get some balance!

The Weekend Australian's front page article A Decade of lost action on literacy reports on Australia's poor performance in a recent international reading test. According to the PIRLS results 25 per cent of year 4 children in Australia failed to meet the standard in reading for their age.

The paper version of the Australian has a cartoon placed at the beginning of the article. The picture shows a female teacher with an annoyed look on her face and assuming an aggressive pose. Her fists on her hips while standing over a sheepish looking boy sitting at his desk. In the middle ground there is an adult male and female looking through the classroom door.

The female figure says, "Is the kid a slow learner?"

The other observer then replies, "No but the teacher is."

The first comment is designed to blame the child by giving him the label - 'slow learner'. The second comment blames the teacher.

What is even more interesting is that the electronic version of the article (see the link above) completely leaves out this very derogatory cartoon. Quite possibly, it may have been a copyright issue or maybe the editor realised that it was demeaning to a mainly dedicated and self-sacrificing group of people.

What did the newspaper replace the cartoon with?

Now this is worth a thoughtful look. The photo shows a teacher  in the foreground with his back to the viewer and facing a large group of students sitting in regimental rows of single desks with heads bent over their work. Presumably this is a test situation but the question is, "Why did they choose this particular photo to go with the article?"

The second attempt to blame the victim employs another label - "Whole Language". The implication being that the drop in our reading results is because teachers have been using a 'whole language' approach.  Whole language was a term that became popular about three to four decades ago but few Australian teachers embraced this as their only approach to the teaching of reading. Can you even find a single teacher still using a whole language only approach today? How long will they keep using this label as an excuse? If you did a word frequency count of all articles in Australian professional journals over the last 15 years you would most likely find that the term 'phonics' or 'phonics instruction' has a high count while the term "Whole Language" is hardly ever mentioned.

Even though the teaching of phonics is essential it is not sufficient for reading progress through school. Phonics teaching by itself is a very simplistic response to a very complex learning process. There is more to reading than what you see. An emphasis on phonic instruction as the panacea for all reading difficulties can lead to a situation whereby children can word call with little or no comprehension. This  debate continues in the United States where similar arguments are often used. Some eminent researchers in the US claim that some phonics only approaches are driven by vested commercial interests. Obviously it is very simple to market a phonic teaching package rather than invest in ongoing training of teachers in effectively teaching the reading process. Recognised research reports advocate for a balanced approach to reading instruction, this includes the US National Reading Panel, Australia's Nelson Report and prominent researchers such as the late Michael Pressley.

Low scores for reading in year 4 support the notion of a well recognised year 4 slump. This is not only a problem in Australia but can be seen in other English speaking countries including the US and England (see my Book). This is a complex problem  - many children, who appear to read well in the lower primary or elementary grades begin to exhibit difficulties in reading around this year 4 period.  At this stage the language in books becomes much more complex with less illustrations to assist comprehension. In the lower grades books are often levelled to match children's individual reading ages and many children tend not to acquire new and challenging words. During the year 4 stage more complex non-fiction genres are introduced and children are expected to read to comprehend. This requires the explicit teaching of reading comprehension skills with practice over an extended period of time. Reading problems begin to manifest in year 4, particularly in schools where little emphasis is placed on comprehension in the lower grades.

The situation is that if education systems continue to place more emphasis on word level skills and neglect training teachers to implement a balanced approach that includes reading comprehension, they will face a very slippery decline in reading performance.