The debate about publishing school-by-school exam results is not going away. If you want to follow it, here’s a few items and links you might want to read:

Teachers must be held to account: Concealing poor results reinforces educational disadvantage

Editorial, The Australian, 28 May 2009

If ever the Rudd Government needed to smash provider capture it is now, with teachers and school principals threatening rearguard blackmail to derail the essential shift towards transparent reporting of school performance. … Should they succeed, the losers will be students, the wider society and the economy.

Read entire editorial: http://tinyurl.com/mkbwg7

School league table plans ‘oppressive’

Emma Macdonald, Canberra Times, 28/05/2009

State and territory education ministers are too scared of losing billions of dollars in federal funding to oppose Rudd Government plans to allow league tables of schools, a former Dean of Education at the University of Melbourne says.

International education consultant Professor Brian Caldwell said new reporting standards agreed between the states, territories and Commonwealth would lead necessarily to league tables and direct comparisons of schools and this would spell disaster for Australia’s education system.

Read entire article: http://tinyurl.com/nnnuub

Education agitation against “league tables”

Professor Brian Caldwell, ABC Radio “Life Matters” 28 May 2009

League tables (school performance results) should be banned by parents and teachers.

The government’s insistence on making results public defies most professional advice, and ignores international experience, according to educational consultant Professor Brian Caldwell.

He’s calling on parents and teachers to reclaim their local schools, and use ‘radical dissent’ to prevent the government from publishing school data.

Listen now or download audio at http://tinyurl.com/n74ruh