Tampered data further knocks confidence

6 June 2013

Immediate Release

Tampered data further knocks confidence in next week’s National Standards data release

National Standards data due to be released next week (June 10) will be even more unreliable than last year’s, because of changes to an assessment tool used to inform teachers’ judgements about children’s writing, says NZEI Te Riu Roa.

The Ministry of Education last month changed the results of students’ Term 1 e-asTTle writing assessments without telling schools, and has since asked schools to tell parents that their children’s results have been scaled down. e-asTTLE is the only standardised assessment tool for writing and is used by many schools, at the Ministry's recommendation, to help inform National Standards judgments by teachers.

However, students’ 2012 e-asTTLe data was not changed by the Ministry, so it is likely that National Standards writing results from last year, due to be published on Monday (June 10) will be inflated.

NZEI Immediate Past President Ian Leckie says that a confusing and poorly-communicated re-alignment of e-asTTLe tests last year had been followed by the Ministry now directly intervening to change student data.

"This will further reinforce schools' lack of confidence in the reliability of last year's National Standards data," he says.

"Worse, this action by the Ministry, without any communication or consultation with schools, is not ethical, professional or robust. Teachers have had confidence in normed, standardised tools like e-asTTle because they knew that in contrast, National Standards were set in an arbitrary and untested fashion. Now the Ministry's actions are rocking confidence even in these tools."

The Ministry scaled down students' e-asTTle writing results without informing schools in the April term break. Rae Stafford, principal of Opoutere School, says she was outraged by the Ministry's action.

"We have just reported to parents at the end of last term on data collated in Term One. Now that data has been changed without our knowledge. Parents will justifiably be upset about this.

"How can we possibly use tampered data for National Standards or reporting to our Board and community?"

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