Education Reform: Barry O’Farrell Begins to Walk the Wrong Path

10:29 Mar 11th, 2012 | 1 note

There is a new vogue in conservative politics: education reform. Arguably started by Governor Jeb Bush (R-FL) back before President George W. Bush’s 2001 ‘No Child Left Behind Act’, the trend has now reached Australian shores; and Premier Barry O’Farrell is a willing convert.

The political argument goes like this: labor or left-leaning parties are too tightly aligned with teachers unions, and thus are incapable of implementing the changes necessary for school system to continue achieving at a high standard. To the rescue come conservative politicians, free of the shackles of unions and with all the answers to the questions of why students are doing poorly.

Naturally, the NSW Teachers Federation is dubious of Premier Barry O’Farrell’s new cocktail of reforms that the Daily Telegraph (a little too enthusiastically) labels ‘The greatest revolution to hit NSW education in 50 years’. At the heart of the plan lies ‘merit pay’, the system whereby teachers are paid for performance. It sounds like a nobel and fair minded idea, and it is. The problem is that no one has figured out how to do it correctly.

In the US, various merit pay systems have been developed, each with mixed success, and each with their own problems. The ‘Teacher Advancement Program’ is one such system, and while it has met with favorable outcomes, it costs between $250 and $400 per year, per student. Florida’s merit pay scheme also throws up numerous problems. The Tampa Bay Times reported in 2008 that three quarters of teachers who received merit-based bonuses worked in affluent areas, and only three percent worked in the state’s poorest schools. Rather distressingly, Florida’s Hillsborough county actually ran out of money before it had handed out all the bonuses teachers had earned.

New York’s merit pay system has created different problems. A report by the RAND Corporation (a not-for-profit research group) found that three-quarters of New York teachers believed that their system relied too heavily on test scores, and that one-third of teachers didn’t even understand how the merit pay system worked. RAND also found that teachers not part of merit pay systems were just as likely to undertake additional professional development training as those who were under merit pay.

Attempts to diversify the way improvements are measured have so far led to confusion. Chicago’s new merit pay scheme measures ‘quality management’ and ‘school climate’, while Denver’s ‘ProComp’ program measures ‘parental satisfaction’. Beyond issues with the way merit pay is calculated, there have been discoveries of large scale fraud by teachers seeking to improve their pay by changing student test results, encouraging low performing students to stay at home on test days, and even destroying entire tests after they are collected. Such events have been recorded in Georgia, and Washington D.C..

However, one of the biggest complaints teachers have about merit pay is that it strikes at the heart of a profession so deeply reliant on collaboration and teamwork. The central premise of merit pay is that individuals will work harder if incentivized, and that means getting ahead of your peers. Teaching has never been a profession that has attracted individuals who seek to gain the upper hand on their colleagues, because teaching has never been a zero-sum profession. To force teachers to compete will destroy the free flow of ideas that has been a hallmark of their vocation.

There is another way.

One need only look at the dazzling success of Finland’s education system to find a model proven to give results. Finland ranks 6th in the OECD in math, 2nd in the sciences, and 3rd in reading. What separates Finland from much of the rest of the developed world? The answer is the exact same foundation upon which merit pay rests: money. The entrance marks required to study teaching is equal to that of medicine or law. Only ten percent of applicants wanting to study primary education are accepted, and every Finnish teacher leaves university with a masters degree. To be a primary school teachers is to be as highly paid and respected as a doctor, or a lawyer. Finland throws out the concept of competition among teachers and competition among schools in favor of equity and high standards for all schools. Finland has no standardized testing, no national testing of any kind, and merely relies on the quality of its teachers to prevent students from falling through the cracks. Their current system is forty years in the making, but it works.

Australia, and NSW, who rank 15th in math, 10th in science, and 9th in reading, would do best to reject the failures of the United States (30th in math, 23rd in science, and 17th in reading), and instead begin to lay the foundations of a path towards Finnish-style success.

That, truely, would be the greatest education reform to hit NSW in 50 years.

Teachers, Nurses And Police Officers: The New Public Enemy?

10:32 Jun 5th, 2011 | 15 notes

Barry O’Farrell’s latest pice of industrial relations legislation has far reaching consequences not only for public employees, but for the future of the public service in New South Wales and for the state economy.

It has been described by 7.30 as ‘One of the country’s biggest Industrial Relations experiments’, taking control over public sector pay away from the NSW Industrial Relations Commission and giving it to the NSW parliament. The Industrial Relations Amendment (Public Sector Conditions of Employment) Bill 2011 will have the effect of politicizing and dramatically reducing the pay of the 400,000 public workers in NSW into the future, with unforeseen results.

Premier Barry O’Farrell touts that the legislation removes a $900 million bill from the tax-payer’s pocket and that the new policy guarantees a 2.5% annual pay rise to public workers, however both numbers appear to have been pulled from thin air. The text of the bill states no such wage increase obligation, and claims of a ‘financial mess’ by Mr O’Farrell as a reason for such measures have been refuted by ratings agency Standard & Poor’s, that last month praised NSW for its ‘strong budgetary position and sound operating position’. Under the new legislation, all pay rises or variation of award schemes for public employees granted by the NSW Industrial Relations Commission are superseded by government policy, removing the power of the IRC to makes wage changes above whatever the sitting government legislates (Section 146C). Thus, the 2.5% pay rise is purely at the direction of the O’Farrell government and can be changed at will—now and into the future. The government has also stipulated that any increase above 2.5% would need to be balanced by ‘employee-related savings’, which amounts to benefits such as holiday pay and family leave being given up in return for a pay rise.

Unions NSW describe the legislation as ‘worse than WorkChoices’, ‘unprecedented’ and as handing NSW the crown for having the ‘Worst workplace rights in the country’. To understand the impact the state government’s changes will have, the Sydney University Workplace Research Center modeled O’Farrell’s 2.5% annual rise as if it had been in place since 2000. They found that a top-tier public high school teacher’s salary would be $14,580 lower (ranking them the lowest paid in the nation by $8,658), a Senior Constables salaries would be $8,961 a year lower (ranking them the lowest paid in the nation by $2,985), and registered nurses would individually be $12,232 worse off, again, ranking them the lowest paid in the nation, this time by $5,016. These numbers do not take into account overtime pay, which at the present time teachers are not entitled to.

O’Farrell had previously argued that NSW public sector employees were grossly remunerated, claiming their pay had outstripped private sector pay by ‘more than 10 percent’ since 1997. The Workplace Research Center’s report counters this, asserting that almost the entire wage gap he refers to is ‘explained by differences in qualifications, experience and occupation between the sectors.’

If this legislation had been enacted eleven years ago, by now the NSW public service would have been the most unattractive in the country, leading many to avoid seeking employment in it, opting for work in the private sector or in other states. Talented staff would have been all but drained from the system, and the state would be having trouble employing new staff of a similar calibre. It must be noted that these numbers and consequences do not represent a mystical, far-off alternate reality, but now represent the future of public employment in the largest state in the country. Without adequate salaries encouraging the best people into the state’s schools, we leave the future of our prosperity to chance. It is clear, especially for NSW, that a highly educated workforce is what Australia needs ‘If it is to compete in anything other that iron ore’, according to The Economist. For this to occur the education system requires a vertical strategy encompassing all levels education, not just the country’s universities. Such a strategy must inevitably include the best high school teachers possible. The influential newspaper also notes that Australia’s health care system ‘requires attention’, leading to the question of why retaining the best possible public nurses is not part of a reform agenda.

It is also interesting to examine this decision from a direct economic perspective. O’Farrell’s legislation will have the effect of limiting the real wage increases of one in eighteen people in the state to a level below the current 3.3% CPI inflation rate. At a time when consumer confidence has ‘plummeted’ to its lowest level since June 2009, when retail growth is at a puny 1.1% (seasonally adjusted) in the quarter up to April this year, and when ‘cost of living pressures’ is hot button media focus, cutting pay in such a drastic way is going to remove thousands of dollars from the pockets of 400,000 people, and will by strip cumulative millions from the NSW economy. Lacking substantial mineral wealth, NSW relies on retail and other service industries (the Australian Bureau of Statistics classifying ‘financial and insurance services’ as the fastest growing sector in the NSW economy in 2010) as a source of economic growth. Reducing the wages of 13% of the NSW labor force (calculated using 2006 census data) can only result in a negative economic impact if not offset by other parts of the state economy—now the second slowest in the nation.

The Industrial Relations Amendment (Public Sector Conditions of Employment) Bill 2011 was moved through parliament using standing rule 99 in order to gag debate and force the legislation to a vote. The rule was last used 105 years ago. It is clear that the O’Farrell government seeks to rewind union rights back to where they were before NSW and Australia valued and supported their public service. The silver lining is that the Labor Party has been handed an election winning issue by the Liberal government. It remains to be seen if the ALP can pick it up and run with it, and if they can stay united with their traditional allies long enough to reach the 2015 election.

BREAKING NEWS: POLITICIANS HAVE HAD SEX

9:09 Nov 23rd, 2009 | 1 note

All I ever hear in the news these days is stories about politicians having sex. The most recent is the Premier of South Australia Mike Rann having a “flirty” relationship with a bar maid in the early half of the decade. Not only that, but it’s been claimed that he even had SEX WITH HER! OMFG!

Let’s take a step back for a moment before we bring out the moral outrage and righteous indignation. Mike Rann wasn’t Premier when he was in the relationship. Even when we ignore his outright denial, what would he have done wrong if he had had sex with her? He wasn’t even married at the time. What should the headline have actually read? “PREMIER WAS NOT A VIRGIN BEFORE MARRIAGE”. What a complete non-story.

What I’d rather point out is societies obsession with politicians and sex. Hard as it may be to fathom, but they have done the dirty. Personally, I couldn’t care less if John Della Bosca did a bit of bonking with a 26 year old. I really don’t need to know that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd visited a strip club in New York a while back. I don’t care that Premier Mike Rann had a roll in the hay four years ago. I do care if their private lives are affecting their job performance, and it seams that in most cases they really aren’t (except when they get sacked because of it and have no job to perform in anymore).

I’m all for transparency within our governments, but I think it gets to a stage where we’d rather not have to imagine late middle aged men doing things on their parliamentary desks and instead we’d rather that they get to work fixing Sydney’s terrible transport network. Lets direct our moral outrage and righteous indignation there shall we?

The Universal Truth

4:29 Jun 15th, 2009 | 2 notes

Let me give it to you straight. Learner drivers are the most hated group of people in the world. I should know, I am one.

It’s also interesting to note that the number of learner drivers will continue to increase for a number of years to come. This isn’t because of birth rates or the number of teenagers turning 16, but because of the rediculous expectations placed on learner drivers. In New South Wales, learners have to complete and log 120 hours of driving before they can take a test to move onto P (Provisional) plates. That’s right, Australia has several levels of learning before you get a full license. 120 hours!!! That’s 5 days worth of driving. The reason that there are increasingly more learner drivers on the roads is because no one can manage to finish their hours so they can move onto P-plates.

Here’s where the hypocrisy starts. Every adult who doesn’t have a 16 year old child will tell you that making learner drivers complete 120 hours is an excellent thing and that it will give learners the experience they need so they won’t go out and drink/take drugs then drive home in sedan with 9 people in the car. FYI, 120 hours of driving doesn’t magically give teenagers common sense, just a strong dislike of the establishment. Back to the hippocrasy. Just wait until these adults have to drive around with a disgruntled teenager who always thinks he’s right even when he goes around a roundabout the wrong direction and then tell me that 120 hours is a good thing. Let me tell you, I’ve had more family conflict in the drivers seat than anywhere else.

But here’s where hipocrasy turns learner drivers into the hated group they are. Once 120-hour-loving adults get in their cars and on the road, their thoughts of learner drivers magically change. We go from being “Those in need of experience” to “Road menaces” and “Those who shouldn’t be on the road”. 120 hours of driving goes from “Valuable experience” to “A burden on other drivers”. We are honked at, cut off, swerved in front of and ever cursed at some times. You name it, we cop it. This hatred comes from one thing, our lack of experience on the road. Sound familiar?

So I implore you, if you see a learner driver on the road, be patient. If I want to change lanes, please give me some space, because I can’t perceive depth in wing mirrors. If I’m going the speed limit, don’t overtake me, that’s just stupid. And If I misjudge a turn in a car park and need to back up, don’t stop as close to me a possible, for heavens sake back up as well!

Update on the Australian Student… Netbooks

6:10 May 4th, 2009 | 1 note

Yay sources! Today I found out that testing of the student laptops would begin soon, with selected teachers from New South Wales pilot schools to be receiving them in the near future. I also managed to get this helpful pamphlet about the laptops detailing more of their specs and pre-installed software.

It has finally been confirmed that the laptops are not laptops. They are netbooks. I don’t think the government realize just how significant the difference is. Note the quote on the first page:

“Considering the device size these are impressive specifications.”

Sorry to burst your bubble Mr Deputy Director-General of Schooling, but they’re not. An Intel Atom processor? Are you kidding me?! What happened to these laptops costing $2200 each to make, or being “powerful enough for the IT needs of today’s students”? You’re handing me bronze and tell me its gold! If you honestly think that such a slow processor is powerful for what you want it for then you obviously haven’t look at computers since the late 90s.

The netbooks are the Lenovo IdeaPad S10e. Fine as a secondary computer, terrible if you want students to use them stand alone.

Here’s where the big problems arise: the installed software. Well, it’s not the software itself. It’s the combination of the resource demanding software coupled with the incredibly low power netbook hardware. Here is the installed software:

  • Adobe Photoshop Elements
  • Adobe Premier Elements
  • Adobe Acrobat Professional Extended
  • Adobe Flash CS4 Professional
  • Adobe Dreamweaver CS4
  • Adobe Presenter
  • Adobe Captivate CS4
  • Adobe Fireworks
  • Adobe Contribute
  • Adobe Device Central, Version Cue and Bridge CS4
  • Microsoft Office 2007 Professional

Now that’s quite an impressive list I admit. I wish I had all of that. What I love is how stingy Adobe were with Photoshop and Premier! Undoubtedly the two most used Adobe applications and they give students the dumbed down versions.

Truth is, it doesn’t matter. If the Government think that those machines will run Photoshop (let alone Premier) and the rest of CS4 at an adequate standard then they are sadly mistaken. In the end, this is another attempt by the Australian government to play catch up with some of the education systems across the world. These netbooks won’t sustain students through their schooling. These netbooks are not the latest most powerful technology, they have specifications from computers nearly 5 years old. These netbooks won’t be able to keep up with the IT needs of students and they most certainly won’t solve any of the problems they set out to achieve.

I’m not saying that these machines are useless, far from it. They are a fantastic device for email, web browsing, listening to music but by no means were they built to run Photoshop or or edit video. What I’m saying is that what we as students were promised was technology that will meet our needs. The government outlined those needs by installing CS4 on the them. Unfortunately, a netbook just doesn’t cut it.

What we’re left with is just an expensive exercise in PR.

So in the end it’s true. The fantastic dream of high powered technological classrooms will stay just that, a dream. Instead, politics and rhetoric have gotten in the way of reality. Again.