School reforms ‘need to be tested’

“Too many education reforms are failing to measure success or failure in the classroom,” said Dr Andreas Schleicher. He is right, but in 2009, New Zealand’s National Education Monitoring Project (NEMP) concluded that “…over the 12 years from 1997 to 2009 there has been a small net improvement in mathematics performance at year 4 level (held back from a larger improvement by the decline between 2001 and 2005 in basic fact knowledge), and essentially no net change in mathematics performance at year 8 level.”

So we did have an effective evaluation in place. What happened next? NEMP got shut down and the new curriculum remains intact. It really is time for parents and teachers to demand something better from the Ministry of Education.

School reforms ‘need to be tested’
Trillions of dollars are spent on education reforms around the world without any effective evaluation to see if changes have worked, says the OECD.
bbc.com