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作为经常和州政府作对的媒体，SMH还发表了一篇编者按，向公众说明为什么SMH要公布排名
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/editorial/why-we-are-publishing-a-league-table-20100128-n1ly.html
Why we are publishing a league table
January 29, 2010
This newspaper has been a consistent supporter of quality education. That is not the same, of course, as unquestioning support for whatever education lobby groups and teachers may have demanded at a given point. It is rather support for whatever promotes a flexible and responsive system that challenges young people, enriches their experience, enlarges their imagination and horizons, and equips them where appropriate with vocational skills. Above all, it is support for raising the status of education - of schools and teachers, of teaching and learning - in Australia's priorities. The clever country is a much overused slogan, but it does express a worthwhile aim. If Australia is indeed to become the clever country, we believe greater variety, and greater choice in education, informed by accurate information, are essential.
Today, consistent with that historic support for quality education, the Herald publishes a league table of NSW schools. We do so fully aware of the controversy it is likely to raise - and in full knowledge that what we do contravenes the absurd, inconsistent and oppressive law of this state. Published online the same tables infringe no law; printed on these pages they are illegal. Such laws bring the law itself into contempt. But we take this risk believing that publishing this information is in the public interest.
The Federal Government is right to want to rank all schools in the country according to their performance in standardised tests. That information is already known to education administrators, of course. Why then does making it public make a positive contribution? We believe there are three main reasons.
The first is, as the Education Minister, Julia Gillard, states, the impetus it will give to parental action on standards at their school. A more important aspect of this will be the political pressure the information will prompt to improve standards at underperforming schools. To point out that a school is not performing as well as its peers is essential if problems are to be addressed. It is not to stigmatise the school; still less is it to stigmatise students at the school. It is to effect change where necessary. As the Herald reported yesterday, figures obtained by the state Opposition show that as things stand poorly performing schools do not necessarily receive the remedial funding they need. Leaving things up to the experts - keeping performance data secret within the bureaucracy, as the critics of publication want - does not result in action. We believe publishing the data will increase the pressure to fix problems. Moreover, we believe there is a strong case for a national body - a bureau of education statistics - to publish and analyse the information in an impartial and apolitical way.
The second reason for publishing the figures is to give parents better information on which to base their choice of a school. Simple aggregates of results in basic skills tests say a little about what a school is achieving, but they do not reflect the full experience that each school offers. They provide a necessary basis, though, on which comparisons can be made, which, with other information provided by schools, other parents and the community, will give parents more confidence.
As with any radical change to past practice, there are, of course, dangers in publishing comparative data. As critics of publication have stated, there exists a risk that schools will be prompted simply to teach to the test and neglect a broader education. There is a related danger if poor performance is allied to increased funding: might underperforming schools close to a cut-off point for assistance not be tempted to depress their performance so as to boost school funds? Damaging trends such as these have been observed in Britain and the United States where school performance data has been published.
The Federal Government has yet to explain how it will counter practices that would undermine its attempt to improve educational quality. However, we believe that awareness of the traps will help education professionals - and parents - avoid them. We believe too that on balance the benefits of transparency in this case outweigh its possible costs.
The third reason is both more general and more fundamental. The Government's decision to go ahead with the MySchool website, despite widespread criticism from teachers - a core Labor constituency - hints at a broader agenda. The advantage for a government that wants genuinely to transform education is that publishing the information in this way may create a political groundswell for change - in education funding in particular.
Funding arrangements in education obscure problems as much as they fix them. Because, in broad terms, state governments fund public schools and the Commonwealth funds private schools, politicians from different levels of government are easily able to push different priorities to suit local or sectional interests. The result is a confused mess of funding policies. By making public the comparative performance data on all schools it is allowing all Australians to see, in effect, how each school, public and private, is using its funding, and to judge how well taxpayers' funds are being spent. It should lead eventually to thoroughgoing reform of education funding. In a field where public debate about the distribution of funds between public and private schools has for too long been conducted in a thick fog of rumour and prejudice, accurate comparisons will for the first time shine a clear light. |
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