Teaching Standards in Australia

As a part of this writing group, I have been doing a lot of reading about standards in Australia and around the world. Some of the documents I have downloaded have been fantastic to read and will be very useful in my job as Professional Learning Coordinator.
For example:
From "Professional teaching associations and professional standards: embedding standards in the discourse of the profession" by Terry Hayes, he says:

• There is a tension between using standards for accreditation and using them as a goal for all teachers to aspire to.
• He further articulates this potential problems with
• comparability versus creativity in presenting evidence of accomplishment
• meaningful versus manageable amounts of evidence to present
• personal goals versus what the school/system wants
• value of assessment versus ongoing critical inquiry.
• He also states that the context of where teachers work is of critical importance when assessing attainment of the standards. Some others feel that standards can be context free.
• There is another issue. It is a conflict of interest that arises when the people setting/governing the standards may have different priorities than those who are being assessed by them. Often peak bodies have the capacity to offer PD associated with helping people achieve the standards. Then a conflict develops because the body has a vested interest in keeping the current standards and assessing it in ways that THEY have already developed.
• Also a very important point about the idea of isolated teachers being assessed as achieving the standards or not. Surely we want to encourage cooperation between teachers so should individual teachers be assessed in isolation?
  

My personal opinion is that standards should not be used to pump up a small group of teachers to say how great they are and give them more money. It should be used inspire ALL teachers to become better teachers and should promote a cooperative and collegial approach to reaching these standards. I also feel that the assessors should not be the PD providers otherwise there will be too much of a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.