Hunger artists : literacy, testing & accountability

This article interrogates the dominant ideology that is shaping education in Victoria at the current moment. It does so by analysing the government school publication, Education Times, focusing on the years 2000–2003. During those years the Victorian Government invested a significant amount of money into improving the literacy outcomes of so-called underperforming students through initiatives such as Restart and Access to Excellence. Education Times played an important role in promoting these initiatives, and thus provides a useful vehicle for examining the ideology driving educational reform in Victoria

CSI Literacy: The Forensic Application of Basic Skills Testing

This presentation is a reflection on the application of literacy testing in a criminal case in the UK. A woman of retirement age was charged with fraud on the basis of a repeated false statement on a benefit form. The author was asked by defense lawyers to provide an expert opinion on whether the defendant’s claim to have misunderstood the question due to limited literacy skills was credible. The presentation reviews the procedures developed by the author to come to an informed opinion, and discusses some of the limits of literacy testing the process revealed

High stakes standardized testing & marginalized youth: An examination of the impact on those who fail

   This study examines the impact of high-stakes, large-scale, standardized literacy testing on youth who have failed the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test.  Interviews with youth indicate that the unintended impact of high-stakes testing is more problematic than policy makers and educators may realize.  In contrast to literacy policy's aims to help promote the "well-being" of all learners, and "equity" within the educational system; youth attest to feeling "shame" and show further marginalization due to this testing mechanism.  These findings suggest that it is necessary to broaden the dialogue about the impact of high-stakes standardized literacy testing and its effects.  Key Words: high-stakes standardized testing; literacy; equity; marginalized yout

Editorial

The scrutiny of any educational system inevitably raises issues about constructions of worthwhile knowledge (content) and how the learning of knowledge so-deemed should be managed (pedagogy). Issues of national curriculum reform are discussed by a number of writers in this issue. In providing an overview of the Australian situation, Wayne Sawyer raises issues related to the uneasy tension between increasingly critical English curriculum formulations and narrowly defined literacy testing regimes. Writing of the situation in England, Richard Andrews details ways in which curricular reform still operates within a conservative, target-setting and assessment driven model. Terry Locke makes similar points about the New Zealand situation, when he discusses ways in which assessment reforms, especially when related to high-stakes qualifications reforms, construct their own de facto curriculums. The article on the South African situation, by Hilary Janks and Jeanne Prinsloo, is a reminder of ways in which issues of power (and disempowerment) are implicated in curricular constructions

Standards-based accountability : reification, responsibility and the ethical subject

Over the last two decades, teachers in Australia have witnessed multiple incarnations of the idea of ‘educational accountability’ and its enactment. Research into this phenomenon of educational policy and practice has revealed various layers of the concept, particularly its professional, bureaucratic, political and cultural dimensions that are central to the restructuring of educational governance and the reorganization of teachers’ work. Today, accountability constitutes a core concept of neoliberal policy-making in education, both fashioning and normalizing what counts as teacher professionalism in the ‘audit society.’ This article focuses specifically on the recent introduction by the Australian Federal Government of standardised literacy testing in all states across Australia, and raises questions about the impact of this reform on the work practices of English literacy teachers in primary and secondary schools. We draw on data collected as part of a major research project funded by the Australian Research Council, involving interviews with teachers about their experiences of implementing standardised testing. The article traces the ways in which teachers’ work is increasingly being mediated by standardised literacy testing to show how these teachers grapple with the tensions between state-wide mandates and a sense of their professional responsibility for their students

Elements of Success in Welfare to Work Programs: Programmatic and Policy Recommendations

An analysis of eight welfare-to-work programs between 1998 and 2000 in Chicago to identify successful program elements, isolate barriers to employment presented by participants, and make recommendations for welfare reform policy. The programs were both large and small, of both long and short duration, and provided a variety of services, from vocational training to shorter job placement-focused activities. By reviewing quantitative findings within the context of qualitative data gathered through staff and participant interviews, we have identified elements of successful programming and welfare policy recommendations that flow from them.Sample Demographics: Our sample consisted of 843 participants in these eight programs over the two-year period.-- The mean number of children across the sample was 2.57.-- 46.7% had earned a high school diploma or GED.-- Average reading levels were 7.70 and 6.46 for math.-- 81.5% of the sample had been employed at some point prior to entering the program.-- The average length of time on welfare was 6.97 years.Employment Rates and Drop Rates: Analyzing all those participants who showed up at the programs after intake, the employment rate was 56.1% and the drop rate was 43.9%. Those who found employment were younger, had a slightly lower average number of children, and slightly more had been ever employed prior to entering the program.Reasons for Program Drop Outs: The four most commonly cited reasons for drop were child care, health, substance abuse, and low literacy.Child care drop outs were on average older, more poorly educated, and less likely to have been employed in the past. Almost half the child care drop outs had school age children in addition to younger children, giving rise to the hypothesis that they had difficulty in finding child care for so many different age groups.Nearly 80% of the health problems involved the health of the participant rather than other family members. Women who dropped out due to health problems had higher literacy and numeracy levels than the overall sample, as well as a much longer average time on welfare (11.95 years versus 6.97 years). Fewer participants with health problems had ever been employed (75.6%) compared to the overall sample (81.7%), indicating that these health problems have and continue to be employment barriers. Substance abusers dropped out later in the program than other drop outs. They too have been on welfare for a longer time than the overall sample- 8.67 years versus 6.97 years. Since their average employment history was about the same as the overall sample, it is likely that substance abuse causes participants to lose successive jobs, a factor that is associated with longer stays on welfare. Participants who dropped out due to low literacy had average reading scores of 4.54 and math scores of 3.96, considerably lower than the overall sample, and had longer years on welfare (8.34 compared to 6.46 for the entire sample). In addition, they had been employed far less than the sample (55% compared to 81.7%), indicating that their low literacy presented a significant barrier to employment

From Safety Net to Self Sufficiency: A CJC Proposal for a State Mixed Strategy Approach to Prepare TANF and Food Stamp Employment and Training Participants for Illinois' Skilled Workforce

Report details CJC's recommendation that Illinois Department of Human Services (IDHS) adopt a mixed strategy approach for Illinois' TANF and Food Stamp E&T programs. Features of this approach should include individualized assessment and employment planning; flexible combinations of education, training, life skills, and job search toward maximized job placement and career advancement; and necessary supportive services to address employment barriers and enhance family well-being. The Department must identify new local office performance measures and training which reorient services and service deliverers to success defined by skills attainment, wage placement, barrier reduction, and work support receipt.There is no better time than now to align IDHS TANF and Food Stamp work requirements along the continuum of workforce development system expectations so that participants have real access to employment services and real opportunities for family-sustaining employment. CJC is committed to working with the Department to imagine the implementation of a mixed strategy approach in Illinois and to achieve the best possible labor market results for Illinois' poor and working poor individuals and families, as well as Illinois' economy

He Ara Angitu: A Description of Literacy Achievement for Year 0 - 2 students in Total Immersion in Māori Programmes

In response to the recommendations of the Literacy Taskforce Report (1999) and issues highlighted in the Green Paper - Assessment for Success in Primary Schools (1998), the Ministry of Education funded a project in 2000 and 2001 to develop a description of achievement in reading and writing for five-year-old Māori medium students. This provided the opportunity to take a systematic comprehensive look at children’s literacy performance during the first two years of instruction and begin to identify reasonable expectations of progress in reading, written and oral language

RELEVANCE OF ORAL LANGUAGE SKILLSThe Relevance of Oral Language Skills to Performance on State Literacy Testing

Purpose: Investigated correspondences between performance on an array of literacy and oral language abilities with the proficiency ratings on the reading portion of the New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP). Method: Tested 106 fifth-grade students on measures of word-level reading and oral language (i.e., vocabulary, syntax, discourse) near the time when students completed the NECAP assessment. Analyses of performance were conducted with three NECAP outcome groups (Above Proficient, Proficient, Nonproficient (combination of Partially Proficient and Substantially Below groups). Results: Large effect sizes were obtained for differences in oral language and word-level reading skills among the three groups. Decoding, syntax and discourse each accounted for significant variance in state reading scores and differentiated NECAP reading proficiency groupings. Notably, students at all levels varied in their patterns of skills. The majority of Nonproficient students had low scores on word-level reading skills; yet 100% had weaknesses in syntax and/or discourse. Similarly, many students ranked as Proficient had word-level deficits; even more had oral language weaknesses. Conclusions: Treatment of students’ reading weaknesses should be differentiated according to the specific needs of individual pupils. This practice should apply to all critical components of reading comprehension, including oral language skills in syntax and discourse