Testing The Teachers : Melbourne Indymedia

The Ozayrian conservatives are just copying the US right-wingers on this one.
The idea is to deflect attention from the Systemic issues and focus on the "bad drivers" causing the perceived "train wreck" in education. Presumably, teachers have been tested to death by the time they get their degrees from unis. What's actually going on is a constant resource depletion by conservatives in government who want to destroy public education in favour of private/religious indoctrination and career climbing schemes within the tired educational, administrative bureaucracy.

Thanks to the Wal-Mart Walton Family Billionaire Money Junkies funding "research"
(pseudo science hype tat seeks to please their Masters and get merit pay for loyalty) this reactionary idiocy is now on the political agenda in Oz too.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/backgroundbriefing/

Testing the teachers

It's a whiteboard jungle out there as educationalists and economists haggle over the surest way to get the best out of our kids. One proposal being considered is more money for teachers whose students get the best test results. The status quo is not an option, and teachers unions are in a difficult position. Reporter: Stan Correy.

It is broadcast tonight after 7pm on Radio National
and transcript will be available next week

In a dying world teach how to better shop? how to exploit your neighbor better, how to deny any other purpose of life. What the f.. is the merit of any of this?
Schools, Education, gimme a break!
martin

These attempts to bolster Labor and the two-party system amount to damage control. Both the ALP and Liberals have suffered a wholesale collapse of membership and are little more than bureaucratic shells, held together by the trappings of office. In the 2005 Marrickville by-election, the Greens came close to taking the seat from Labor, while opinion polls published in late 2006 revealed one in three voters would cast their vote against both the ALP and the Liberal-National Coalition parties

The forum exposed the political gulf that exists between the SEP and the entire official political establishment. It was addressed by sitting Labor MP Carmel Tebbutt, who is Education Minister in the NSW Labor government, Liberal Party candidate Ramzy Mansour, and the Greens and Socialist Alliance candidates.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/feb2007/sep-f14.shtml