Australian literacy and numeracy statistics for teachers
The literacy and numeracy rates for teachers in Australia is dropping. Anyone know where to find the same numbers for Canadian teachers?
Teaching standards in Australia are dropping:
EVIDENCE that the academic standards of new teachers are significantly lower than a generation ago will underscore a Howard Government push for the introduction of merit pay.
The Education Minister, Julie Bishop, seized on research released yesterday that showed the average teacher trainee in 1983 was more literate and numerate than 74 per cent of age peers. By 2003, that advantage was down to 61 per cent - and the decline was similar for new teachers.
One suggested solution? Merit pay:
Low salaries for teachers were the main culprit, the researchers from the Australian National University concluded. But they said merit pay for good teachers would be more cost-effective in tackling the problem than across-the-board pay rises.
Ms Bishop will pursue the problem with state and territory ministers this year, in an attempt to reverse teaching's status as "one of the few professions that does not reward individual performance".
The ANU researchers, the economists Andrew Leigh and Chris Ryan, found fewer high-ability graduates were lured to teaching as pay in other professions outstripped that of teachers.
Needless to say, merit pay is a non-starter for teacher's unions:
The findings are a slap for teacher unions which "have consistently rejected merit pay, and have remained industrially powerful throughout the period in question", the researchers said.
The Ontario Teachers' Federation rejects merit pay as well.
I wonder how literacy levels in Canada break down by profession? Of course, the people at the OTF would rather not know, I suppose.
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Comments
Literacy and numeracy are barely taught anymore in our public schools, so I don't see why would they be considered mandatory skills for teachers.
The problem is not that public schools are badly run, the problem is that they are public schools.
When communist leaders made the production and distribution of food into a state monopoly, people starved to death. When Canada made education into a state monopoly, people were turned into illiterate and innumerate morons. Do you see the connection? Many people, in fact practically all of the supporters of every political party in Canada, think that central planning and state monopolies work as long as really, really sensible and smart people (such as themselves) are the ones whose hands are on the tiller (and on the gun).
But you can't take unions of public education, you can't take bureaucrats out of public education, you can't take politicians out of public education and you can't take stupidity out of it either. It's built to be stupid.
From my friends at Mises.org I see that the big push for nationalized education in the USA came from a political desire to assimilate and propagandize Catholics and Lutherans so they would be "right thinking" (in this particular case, to mould them into puritan/evangelical types). I suspect that very similar motivations were behind the drive for public schools in Canada, except probably it was the wish to convert immigrants into obedient little Anglicans and Tories. Either way, it's political empire building, it's dishonest, it's socialism, and I say it's bullcrap and I'm not having any of it.
Posted by: at August 27, 2006 01:06 PM
Standards for Canadian teachers were always very low to begin with so it's unlikely they could drop very much. If the principal could keep them sober it was an achievement when I went to school.
Posted by: philanthropist at August 27, 2006 01:13 PM
It's not just teachers who suffer from problems in literacy and numeracy. I cringe when I see glaring errors in grammar on signs that my medical doctor has in his office. Here is a well educated man and an excellent doctor who really needs an editor. And I'm going to tell you what the problem is - at least in Ontario.
Until 1967, in Ontario, every high school student who wanted to go to university had to write a common external exam in every subject studied in his graduating year. The exam was marked in a central place (Varsity Arena in Toronto) by a stranger and then re-marked by another stranger. In English Composition, if you made more than three major errors, you failed. If you failed English, no university would admit you.
In those days, a mark of 67 was a respectable mark. As soon as the common external exams were dropped, marks in graduating years started to rise. A mark of 67 in the old scale would equal at least 80+ in the new scheme. It became impossible to compare marks from different schools. Before 1967, if you couldn't write a decent sentence - let alone a paragraph - you couldn't get into university.
Sadly, there weren't similar requirements in math. Nor are there any now. Far too many university graduates who specialized in Man and His This and That (because math wasn't "their thing") are cranked out each year and too many of them end up as teachers and lawyers and reporters and ... .
Sigh!
Posted by: Tom in Mississauga at August 28, 2006 07:36 AM
Things that need to happen if the education situation is going to improve. Teachers have to be given the power to control their classrooms. Students need to be subjected to standardized tests that are not marked their own teacher. Teacher’s salaries need to be tied to the improvements in their students. Universities, no make that High Schools have to start failing people who can't write. Well that is not everything but it would be a good start.
Posted by: Phil at August 28, 2006 06:39 PM
 
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