By Mark
What exactly does this word mean?
I read often that the reason schools are failing is that teachers are not being held accountable. Teacher accountability is the solution to all the problems in public education. Tie teacher pay to performance, make them accountable! If students don't perform, shutter the school, fire the teachers, hold them accountable!
I work to make sure that I hold my students accountable. But, that doesn't mean standing at the front of the room and making threats and demands until they perform. If I am going to hold my students accountable, I know that I have a responsibility to them. I must offer them the time, the training, and the support to do the tasks for which I am holding them accountable. I must give them strategies and resources, not just mandate that they do while I watch and wait, leaving them to figure it out and readying to punish them if they don't.
So, I'm a relative young'un…not even a decade in the business. Can someone please explain to me how "holding teachers accountable" will solve all the problems in education today? Why are we focused on accountability (which to me, for some reason, carries a punitive connotation) rather than preparation and providing adequate resources?
Accountability should be shared. By everyone; the students, their parents, the teachers, the administrators, the schools of education and the politicials.
Unfortunately, Mark, you’re right. Accountability has become a code for blaming teachers for the shortcomings of any or all of these stakeholders.
I wish someone would take me up on this bet:
So “accountability” is the answer? Nope, I say throw money at the school.
Billionaires, are you listening? Give me a school to run, and give me merely 200% of the school’s current budget. Let me spend it how I want. Let my teachers structure the programs how they want based on best practice, research, and their accumulated knowledge of their learners. I’m not asking for unlimited funds. I guarantee you I can create a school which will perform better than an analogous school with half the funding. No, I’m not going to blow my cash on tech tools or fancy gadgets. Those are accessories. Money must be invested in reducing class size, increasing adult-to-child one-on-one contact, and increasing the amount of time in the day for professional educators to spend assessing, collaborating, analyzing student work, and crafting intentional lessons to respond to student needs. Money WILL solve the problem. “Accountability” (read: blaming teachers) will not solve the problem. Don’t believe me? Write me a check and I’ll prove it to you.
Mark, I feel like teachers are being held as the accountability scapegoats. In the course of my years of teaching experience, holding the students and the parents accountable has been happening less and less. We try harder and harder to find “reasons” like ADHD or poverty to explain why the students can’t be as responsible as students in the past. Or we fear dealing forcefully with parents because of potential lawsuits. What happened to the old-fashioned truancy officers who would go to a kids house and basically drag them to school? Why do we allow parents to pull kids out of class for weeks at a time for a “family vacation”? It is very difficult to get a kid to a point that he will pass the HSPE when mom lets him stay home every time he doesn’t feel like going to school or complains about the homes because it interferes with soccer practice.