如果毛利人要获得学术上的成功，那么我国的教育体系就需要改变。
好消息是对这个系统只是改进，并非全面大修。
改进要从这样一个起点开始：即围绕到底是什么令毛利儿童乐学求知而重建一个讨论的框架。
我们的难点在于：鲜有令儿童变得笨了的战略。老师们做的几乎每件事都是让孩子们或多或少能学点儿东西。因此老师们大可以拍着胸脯说，他们正使学生的人生有所不同。
问题是：“是什么让孩子们得到最好的学习成果？”
最好的成效取决于学生面对的老师的素质。一个杰出的老师，其行为一定程度上会受到基于最佳实践而形成的教育策略的影响。
能让孩子们学习的关键是优秀的教师--- 而不是项目，不是国家标准，不是学区，不是班级大小，不是去罚旷课学生的家长，如此等等。
不是所有教师都堪称优秀，但多数教师都会自称杰出。
影响学生学习成果的变数实在太多了--- 诸如家长的支持，家长的教育水平，社会经济状况，家长介入语言学习的程度，等等等等，可以列出一长串的单子--- 若藉此以衡量单个教师在其中起到的作用，是相当困难的。
这使得自身素质不合格的教师拿变数当借口。而这些变数都应当去除。
一个老师优秀与否，完全可以凭着一些明显的行为来判断。措施包括每堂课上对学生阐明将要学习的内容，解释学习的方法和成功的经验，使用有助于学习的鼓励性语言，构建相互理解与支持的师生关系，定期针对学习进展给学生以书面或口头反馈,未来目标应如何进取，等等。
优秀的教师，总是会运用实践证明过的成功教学策略，以提高成效。
问问自己，是希望你的孩子有一个能应用实践证明过的成功策略的老师，还是一个使用有疑问的所谓有效策略的老师。不幸的是，我们常常责备孩子，却不过问教师的策略是不是得力。
研究表明同一所学校的教师水平差异极大，这种差异也存在于不同的学校之间。
议会不应陷于划分学区的意识形态的辩论中，议会该关注的，是保证每所学校的每个班级、每个学生，都能有一名出色的老师站在他们面前。
这应当是每个新西兰儿童不可剥夺的权利。
当我们作为政治家而忙于那些多余的争论、津津乐道于民粹主义和意识形态种种时，实际上是在给我们的学生—亦即我国的未来，帮倒忙。
我们要对教师队伍进行投入，让老师们有足够强的技能和条件来保证最见成效的工作。
实习教师的选择非常重要。现实是，很多老师自身还没有准备好，就超出能力范畴而进了教室传道授业，于是产生一系列差的连锁反应。许多校长因为要处理教学水平很差的老师而大感头疼。作一个好雇主，意味着善于提供好的指导和建议。学校越小，这方面的困难越大。
一些学校以外的社会因素也影响了学生们校内的日常学习，同时成为一些教师成绩不彰的借口。
社会因素固然存在，投身教育行业的教师却必须准备好同时还得适应社会工作者，护士，心理医生，警员，父母的多重角色。这些使得老师的工作非常难做。政府应当创造条件使得老师能安心于最核心的工作---教学。
如果政府只着手于一些无关紧要的外围议题，无法为提升教师水平创造条件，我国的教育将被拖后腿而迟滞不前，我国的未来亦将因此而受损。
不幸，目前毛利学生在‘拖后腿’中是最沉重的部分。
How to Raise (Maori) Achievement
An opinion from Kelvin Davis MP
If Maori are to achieve academically the education system needs to change.
The good news is the system needs refining rather than a major overhaul.
That refinement needs to begin with reframing the educational debate around what research has proven to make Maori kids learn.
The problem we have is that very few strategies actually make kids dumber. Almost everything a teacher does makes kids learn to some extent. Therefore teachers can, with hands on the hearts, claim to be making a difference for their students.
The question is: ‘What makes kids learn best?’
It is the quality of the teacher in front of students that makes the greatest difference to achievement. An excellent teacher will behave in a certain way, influenced by research based best practice teaching strategies.
Excellent teachers make kids learn --- not programmes, not national standards, not school zones, not class sizes, not police vetting of contractors, not fining parents of truants, not league tables.
Not all teachers are excellent, but most will claim they are.
There are so many variables that impact on a student’s achievement --- such as parental support, parental educational levels, socio-economic status, parents’ ability to engage in the language of education, preschool vocabulary and access to early childhood education, ability of previous years’ teachers, the list goes on --- that it is difficult to measure the value added by an individual teacher.
This allows poor teachers to cower behind the variables. The variables need to be removed.
There are definite behaviours that can characterise an excellent teacher. These include articulating to students what they will learn in each lesson, explaining how they will know they have learned successfully, use of supportive learning language, demonstrating supportive and understanding relationships, providing specific and regular verbal and written feedback to students about their learning and their progress, and what they need to learn next in order to achieve even further.
Excellent teachers, who use strategies proven to be most effective, raise achievement.
Ask yourself if you would like your child to have a teacher who uses proven strategies, or one who uses strategies of questionable effectiveness. Unfortunately we often condemn our children into classrooms where teachers use less effective teaching strategies?
Research suggests that there is a greater difference between teachers within schools, than there are differences between schools themselves.
Instead of becoming bogged down in the ideological debate of whether to allow school zones or not, parliament should instead debate how we can ensure every child, in every class, in every school has an excellent teacher in front of them.
This should be the inalienable right of every New Zealand child.
While we as politicians busy ourselves arguing over superfluous, populist and ideological issues we are doing our students, and therefore our country’s future, a disservice.
We must invest in our teachers so that they have the skills, attitudes and conditions that enable them to do their job as efficiently and as effectively as possible.
If teachers want respect for their professional knowledge, they need to demonstrate that professional knowledge in every teaching action they make, every second, of every hour, of every day, of every year they teach.
The conditions necessary for teachers to weave their magic include substantial support and resourcing especially in professional development and the analysis and use of assessment data to refine the ‘next steps’ in teaching individual students in their classes, the development of relationships with students and their whänau, and the development of relevant and engaging curriculum.
School should be the best adventure in town.
Teacher trainee selection is critically important also. The reality is that many enter the classroom woefully out of their depth and are unleashed onto unsuspecting kids, colleagues, parents and principals to deal with. Many principals struggle to deal with poorly performing teachers. Being a good employer means offering programmes of advice and guidance. The smaller the school, the more difficult this is.
There are also social conditions outside schools that are brought into the classroom every day and can form the basis of a teacher’s excuse for not raising achievement.
These social issues are real. Teachers who have entered the profession to teach have had to become social workers, nurses, counsellors, coaches, police officers, mediators, mums and dads. These issues make a teacher’s job a misery, help them justify student underachievement and compound the cycle of social misery that we see on our streets. The government needs to create conditions where teachers focus on their core task --- teaching.
While governments focus on the peripheral issues, while governments fail to support teachers to become excellent, while governments fail to provide the conditions where excellent teachers can weave their magic, we will continue to experience a large ‘tail of under achievement’ and jeopardise our country’s future.
Unfortunately it is mainly Maori students who comprise that tail.
