July 2008
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Professional standards needed to raise NZ's educational achievement

Professional standards to identify excellent teachers, and student testing against national literacy and numeracy benchmarks would help set expectations for education, the Maxim Institute argues.

In a new paper, the institute says teacher standards can make teaching a more attractive career through better remuneration and rewards for high-quality teaching, and to help to raise student achievement.

Standards should be used as part of regular professional development for teachers. The paper calls for a new position of 'excellent teacher' to be created with appropriate rewards and made available as a career path.

Clear national achievement standards for students should also be introduced. This would provide information about student progress, and set expectations for achievement, the institute says.

The Ministry of Education's existing Achievement Tools for Teaching and Learning (asTTle) test could be turned into a national report of student progress towards national benchmarks because it was already 'normed' to the New Zealand curriculum.

The database of asTTle test student achievement would allow comparisons to be made between students in different schools.

The Maxim paper was written as a response to student under-achievement – the large gap between the highest and lowest achieving students within and between New Zealand schools; and problems attracting and retaining good teachers.

Resources

National standards for excellent teachers, reporting of student progress and the NCEA is online as a PDF document.

asTTle is a software tool that teachers can use to create 40-minute paper and pencil tests designed for their own students’ learning needs. Once the tests are scored, the asTTle tool generates interactive graphic reports that allow teachers to analyse student achievement against curriculum levels, curriculum objectives and population norms.

The asTTle web page is at www.tki.org.nz/r/asttle/

A Subtext story about asTTle is at this web page.