ONCE YOU ABANDON THE PRECONCEPTIONS...:

Abandon preconceptions, all ye who enter here (Mercurius Goldstein, 11 July 2008, Online Opinion)

In the USA, at least 50 flowers boom (one for each state), and many more in the different systems and approaches available nationwide. The population size and historical differences in schooling mean that there is room for everybody. From this arises a sense of reassurance that any policy initiative, no matter whether it's mainstream, innovative, radical, reactionary or just plain kooky, can find a home somewhere.

The counter-intuitive effect of all this messy diversity is that it takes a considerable amount of heat out of the debates, and lets in more light. Everybody knows they can get a hearing, and a chance to run with their ideas in some form, somewhere.

By contrast, Australia's small population and relatively small number of centralised administrations mean there is far less policy room for different approaches or ideas to run in parallel. New South Wales for example runs one of the world's largest education bureaucracies, managing more schools than does any single system in America. And the NSW HSC is perhaps the largest examination of its kind anywhere in the world.

This means that in Australia, an ascendant policy idea can affect a far larger proportion of schools and students than can a single plan in America. In relative terms, the stakes are much higher here for any given iteration of policy or curriculum, and this seems to drive a more combative, winner-takes-all approach to the debates.

The other key characteristic that moulds our thinking about education is the differing level of involvement of government(s) in our school systems. Most of us have ideological preconceptions about the virtues or vices of big or small government. In embarking on this next comparison, I invite the reader to consider government involvement from a pragmatic rather than ideological standpoint. Let's look at what works in our two countries:

Many Australians look with varying degrees of horror at the lack of US government safety nets in education, health and social security. Part of what fuels this horror is the assumption that, if the government won't help, nobody will, and people just "fall through the cracks". This may be so in Australia, but in America, the safety nets are of a different character from that with which we are familiar, and so we tend to overlook them.

For while the instinct of many Australians is to look first to government for solutions, for most Americans, government is the last place they would think of looking. The American myth (and I use that term in its broader, explanatory sense) of self-sufficiency drives a more localised and community-oriented approach to common problems than that which exists in Australia. Safety nets are much more likely to be sought and provided at the level of the district, neighbourhood or even street-by-street. Thus the safety nets that exist here tend be micro-financed and much less visible to the statisticians' gaze than the publicly accounted mass initiatives we see in Australia.

There are very few top-down approaches in the USA because the top is often too politically or fiscally weak to impose them, and because in any case the grass roots often resist what they deem to be “government interference”, thank you very much.

This is in stark contrast to Australia's ongoing preference for commissions, inquiries and summits: because they are more likely to produce concrete action (believe it or not!) than are sporadic grassroots attempts to mobilise a sparser and more apathetic population.

NCLB May Boost Science Scores, Too, Study Says (Eddy Ramírez, 7/11/08, US News)

A study by the Center for Civic Innovation at the Manhattan Institute found that Florida elementary schools that were under pressure to improve their math and reading scores made greater gains in science than schools that didn't face similar pressure under that state's accountability system. The findings counter what many critics of No Child Left Behind and other high-stakes testing regimes have said for years: that the focus on reading and math comes at the expense of other subjects that are not tested, and that this crowding effect has led to lower achievement levels in "low stakes" subjects such as science, social studies, and the arts.

Marcus Winters, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute who coauthored the study, says it's difficult to pinpoint why science scores improved. He leans toward the "spillover effect" theory; that if students have strong math and reading skills, they are more likely to master other subjects, including science.

...you can acknowledge your complete ignorance.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 14, 2008 8:55 AM