This article from the NZ Herald reports on a call by the National Party for an Education Ministry internal website containing data on the comparative performance of schools to be made accessible to the public -
National wants wider access to a website which compares school’s performance in order to open up the “culture of secrecy” in education.Bill English wants the Government to provide access to the little known Schoolsmart website, which compares school finances and other factors such as staff turnover and student achievement.
It is currently accessible only to principals and chairs of boards.
“I’ve had a look at it and I can’t for the life of me see any reason why parents shouldn’t be able to see that information,” said Mr English, National’s education spokesman.
The proposition seems to me to have enough merit to at least be worth debating intelligently on its own merits. However in the article, the Education Minister, Steve Maharey tries to dodge the issue -
Mr Maharey said the National Party wanted to privatise schools and giving everyone access to the Schoolsmart website would simply set schools up in competition with one another.[Emphasis added]
Whether making the information public would set schools in competition with one another is relevant to the substantive question about disclosure of information and is therefore worth discussing. And for this reason, whether or not competition in education is a desirable thing (I think there are reasonable arguments on both sides) does bear upon one’s view about disclosure. By all means let’s debate those questions. But privatisation is simply irrelevant to this particular debate and the injection of Maharey’s comments about this is nothing more than a distraction from the real issue.
Even if the National Party did want to privatise schools (a view that is not part of their policy – you can read it here), and even if people who want to privatise schools (whoever they might be) are generally also in favour of making comparative school information public, the arguments either in favour of, or against, public disclosure simply do not depend on the merits or otherwise of privatisation. An interesting issue it may well be, but it is simply irrelevant to what National is actually calling for. Maharey should know better than to change the subject from one subject to another that is much more controversial, much more complex, and yet simply irrelevant.
This is a classic, and frankly nasty, debating trick, which also frequently turns up in the debate over evolution and intelligent design. There, opponents of intelligent design routinely maintain that people who support ID are also religious zealots, and therefore ID must be a religious, not a scientific, idea. Absolutely irrelevant. I’ve quoted this before, but it bears repeating. From the University of Chicago Law School -
“Well, that’s what they say, but we know what they mean” – is uncivil, an illustration of the dismissive and contemptuous treatment that characterizes much contemporary discourse. Once we know who you are, we need not listen. We’ve heard it all already.…The argument they do make deserves to be taken at face value, and the proponents … deserve the same respect. Freedom from psychoanalysis is a basic courtesy.