The performance- improvement trap

The Tasmanian School Report Cards strategy may have fallen into the performance - improvement trap in several ways.

The message communicated is always the message received. The Department/Government has attempted to report on school improvement but the School Report cards have been widely received as reporting on school performance. This makes sense, since student 'report cards have always reported student performance (albeit with some comments on improvement or otherwise).

The relationship between performance and improvement is an interesting one. While performance and improvement are directly related there are some subtleties requiring attention:

• measures of performance are used to to calculate improvement (or otherwise)
  
• measures of improvement do not indicate actual performance
• isolated measures of performance do not indicate improvement
• similar levels of performance may be part of very different degrees of improvement
• similar degrees of improvement may be part of very different levels of improvement
  
• the ease of improvement is (generally) inversely proportional to the level of performance
  
• too few measures of performance may not provide valid indications of improvement
  
• improvement is usually less likely (and more difficult) with better performances
• a perfect performance will result in either no improvement or deterioration
• poor performances are often very easy to improve
• to understand performance and improvement one first needs to understand variation
  • there is always some variation in any system
  • some variation is a result of the system
  • some variation comes from outside the system
  • variation in performance may not be an indication of improvement or deterioration at all... just variation
• one also needs to understand both change and improvement

Reporting performance is personal for those involved. In the book "The Greening of America" the author suggested that to 'assess another person is an act of violence'. Misreporting or misrepresenting performance is even more an 'act of violence'. The damage may be done to individuals, their confidence in themselves and each other and to their relationships.

The current School Report Cards strategy has already done considerable 'violence' in some schools. In its present form the costs involved are likely to greatly exceed the value added.

Repairing the damage done will not be simple. First impressions tend to last and some of the information contained in the Report Cards is clearly invalid or simply not relevant for particular students and their families. For example, I understand that a Kinder student who cannot stand on one leg for 10 seconds is deemed not ready for school. Does this mean that a student with cerebral palsy will never be ready for school? A school with significant improvement in an area may be rated Excellent while performing much less well than another school whose performance in the same area has declined slightly hence being rated as Trend.Down. The impression given by the Report Card contradict its intent. The gold medal goes to the athlete who wins the race not the one who achieves their personal best.

But simply correcting or discrediting the School Reports is a low level response strategy. It will be important to raise the level of the conversation around this matter. Quality data that is comprehensive, current, accurate and valid will be required but it will not be sufficient. And it is not yet clear that the data in the recent School Improvement Reports meets these criteria.

Fundamentally, it is about constructive, collaborative change management in order to achieve ongoing and sustainable improvement. Now there's a challenge!!