[etni] (meitzav) The Education Ministry's whip
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- Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2003 23:36:49 -0700
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(Article about the Meitzav in Haaretz - December 16, 2003)
The Education Ministry's whip
A few weeks ago, elementary school children sweated over the definitions of
complicated geometric shapes. Rhombus, for example, or octagon. The lucky ones
had no difficulty at all. A nice teacher bent over their small heads, asked
what the problem was, and even helped them solve it.
Thus a few schools whose pupils sat the "Meitzav" (School efficiency and growth
index) test, won clemency for another year. Their students proved relatively
good proficiency in the material, their teachers were marked as having relayed
this material successfully, and they - the schools themselves - could get onto
the "good" list. As if that were not enough, at the next press conference,
thanks to this fraudulent magic, the Education Ministry could record the
progress on some graph, indicating the increase in student achievements,
meaning the ministry's achievements.
Thus instead of locating the true weak points in the system and trying to find
solutions that would train better teachers and more skilled students - the
whole system is busy covering its patched behind.
This is how the representative feedback test - an innocent, though somewhat
clumsy and imperfect tool, but one with a reasonable potential for evaluation -
was turned into a tool that is clearly partly political and partly economic.
Political, because any minister can use feedback tests and various efficiency
and growth indices for his own purposes; and economic,
because in the accelerated process of the privatization of education, which
long before the era of Education Minister Limor Livnat and ministry
Director-General Ronit Tirosh had already earned the politically correct name,
"independent management of schools," the focusing on the achievements of
schools had become a whip in the Education Ministry's hand.
(Read the whole article at - www.etni.org.il/news/meitzavwhip.htm or
www.etni.org/news/meitzavwhip.htm )
The ETNI Team
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