Teacher Accountability and Autonomy

When a contractor is hired to build a room addition you expect him to follow your agreed upon contract. He is considered an expert and held accountable for the results. If he doesn't live up to building codes or does a poor job, he can be penalized or sued. You can negotiate changes as he is building it, but you cannot tell him how to do it! You respect him as an expert so he has complete autonomy in determining how to do it.

Not so for teachers. They are certainly held accountable, but their autonomy is limited. They have little input about curriculum, objectives, goals, techniques, or materials to be used.

They are selectively seated on various committees and their opinions are voiced, but they have about the same actual power that student governments have in running a school. People with real political power decide all the important legal, educational decisions.

Unfortunately, these people are the furthest from the actual classrooms and they have little understanding of what is necessary for the teacher to deal with the individual uniqueness and needs of each student and class.

A part of the problem is that these people remember what school was like for them, but the world has changed radically. The civil rights movements made groups and individuals extremely sensitive about any real or believed violation of their rights.

Mainstreaming means teachers have to deal effectively with students no matter what their problem or disability is. Technology and the media have opened up new (and often fun) ways of sending and receiving information that has made the teacher as the only source or center of learning -- obsolete. Yet, from preschool to universities most teachers are trained (often forced) to stand in front of the room and talk and talk and talk.

Curriculum with mandated texts, data, scope and time sequences with "teacher-proof materials" frustrate teachers who could be using their sensitivity, knowledge, training, and experience, but they know any deviation will bring harassment or termination!

Despite these obstacles and because of more effective classroom management techniques, it is easier for many to control their students. Control, not education occurs. Control is effective for the kind of learning that was useful in the past, but limits the kind of creativity and deeper thinking needed to meet the increasingly complex problems of modern society.

Still, I see the most talented, gifted young teachers that I've seen in my fifty years in teaching. I watch as they desperately try to go beyond the confines imposed upon them. I show them ways to live within the system and to flourish, but too many across the nation quit because they feel disrespected -- and alone.

Education needs a new paradigm that emphasizes freedom of choice in thought and action for teachers, students, and parents, not control and conformity. Professors complain that students entering universities have few thinking skills. How can teachers train their students to think when they themselves are penalized for thinking? I see teachers who have great ideas mandated to do only what they are told. How can they encourage the students to be creative, thinking beings in this type of closed system?

Part of America's greatness has been its entrepreneurial dynamics with people risking their own time and money to reap well-earned rewards

That same enterprise that drives small business is what is needed for teachers -- and students. Each teacher should be like a contractor. He should be encouraged to teach in his own style, use the techniques, materials, and technology that work best for his students and for him -- after he has thoroughly assessed them. Then, with real power over his life, he would be able to be a model and to help his students develop their own abilities.

A national curriculum of specific goals, objectives could remain as a guide for the skills and information considered important to for that grade or class. A teacher would be expected to cover these, but the breadth and depth would depend on his assessment of the class and individuals. The techniques, materials, timing, and depth of his delivery would be determined by the teacher.

In return for this autonomy (which not all teachers would want) he would be held accountable for student progress. However, instead of just the arbitrary -- and defective -- national test being the only criterion, he would do the following. Each student would be tested using several different types of tests that would give him a more accurate baseline of each of the necessary skills. This data would be kept on a computer-based portfolio available to anyone at any time.

Reasonable progress would be expected on each student based on his natural abilities (Raven's Matrices is a culture-fair test of this) and his actual achievement on teacher-made, publisher-made, and district wide tests.

The teacher would then be realistically accountable for what he actually tried to teach the class and how much he helped each student improve. Improvement is the key concept. A caveat. He also should be held accountable only for the time he has each student. Therefore, those who he had all year would be counted as ten tenths. If a student entered and was in class for two months, he would be counted as two tenths. As it stands now the teacher is unfairly accountable.

In one school I taught I began the year with twenty-seven students. Only eight of them remained for the entire ten months. I was judged on the scores as if all had been in attendance all year. Fortunately for me, they still scored at grade level or higher.

This unfairness though is one reason teachers resist placement in schools with high rates of transiency and why good new teachers quit in utter frustration.

Accountability, like with the contractor, is only fair and possible when teachers have the freedom, the autonomy to use all the tools at their disposal in the manner the best fits them and their students. Plus, they should be evaluated for the actual teaching time they have with their students.

Comments

[RobinSeattle]

This article illustrates why school boards should be abolished. They are an outmoded form of control that is more obstructionist than helpful and you are basically relying on amateurs to oversee educators. No company in America would tolerate folks with no previous experience in their field trying to oversee their day to day affairs from the outside. So why do we do it with education?

So what we should do is allow teachers to own the results of their instruction by having five or seven person teacher's committees run each school. Principals, who are largely useless anyway, would all be fired and replaced by one discipline officer (a great job for retired police or military, btw) and a bureaucratic officer to take care of all the paperwork. If the school fails, it is easier to then make a rationale for terminating some, most or all the teachers in that school or closing the school itself.

Look, all the focus on improving education has been geared to scrutinizing teachers, but not administrators or school boards. It is time to change that. Let's unload a lot of the bureaucratic baggage that is hindering our schools.

[Skepticat]

In production of things, selection of uniform raw materials, standardized manufacturing processes to exacting tolerance and quality control ensure a consistent product. Applying this industrial statistical model to the public school system has been a disaster because - you are not dealing with uniform inanimate objects. Public schools exist for the children and adolescents of the diverse and highly differentiated public. Some parents & kids value education some don't. Some kids have supportive environments some don't. Some have good social and language skills some don't. Some are bright some aren't. Some are motivated - some rarely attend, don't participate - and could care less. You the classroom teacher have to work with them all. The idea that the teachers accountabilty should depend on all students jumping through the same hoop at the same time is absurd. The idea that some commercial purveyor of standardized educational product knows what's best for a group of students they've never seen is equally stupid.

[ProgressiveVoice]

Years ago, I read an article or op-ed piece in which the author stated parents don't raise children; they raise future adults. It sounds radical but perhaps it is time to pass laws that would enable criminal prosecution of parents that refuse or fail to be actively involved with their child's education. Parents that fail to properly prepare their children for school and learning, whether it be before kindergarten or every school day, are committing a crime against society for which teachers pay the immediate price.

Thirty years of anti-education policies have driven California's schools from #1 in the country to #47. I cannot imagine how the US overall ranking internationally have fared during this time. Don't be fooled into thinking the GOP's "hope Obama fails" mentality is of recent vintage. They have been actively working against public education for thirty years. Initially, the plan was get the Left to support school vouchers, "choice" and "competition" that would also "lead to improvement in the public schools" (except that the vouchers were obvious property tax rebates since voucher value was never more than a fraction of the cost of private schools and therefore never an option to poor parents)

Maybe if the kids spent less time making banners thanking the school's corporate sponsors . . .

[DaCoach]

I taught HS math in an urban school district. The vast majority of my students entered my class at least 2 grade levels below expectations. Yet they were expected to leave my class on par with the next grade. That meant for me to succeed, I had to raise my kids 3 grade levels during the year. Adding to the task was the prime directive of having those students pass a state test. To the administration and my principals, teachers were expected to divert as much time as was needed to enable the kids to pass that state test.

There are numerous other factors that disadvantage our educational system. However, the problem is not the teachers. It's the simplistic evaluation of expectations that prevent a scholarly improvement in the way we educate our children. It's much easier to measure success by comparing student scores on a single test.

Numbers do lie.

[lisakaz2]

Actually, I won't touch secondary education because I do not want the oversight. I hate being told how to do my job. And I would absolutely resent some parent wanting me to go easy on some plagiarizer or tell me that I can't mention Darwin or someone.

But you also can't tell me that lecturing is obsolete. Nor paper writing. The problem I see is that students can't take notes well nor can they find a thesis if it bit them. I don't know what they're geting in high school but I want no part of it. I see enough disasters as it is.

[PaiaGirl]

If we are going to hold teachers accountable for results, then they should be able to remove disruptive students. It is also nonsensical to expect them to teach mentally impaired students along side with normal students. (political incorrect alert!)

Since students without responsible parents who help with homework are at a significant disadvantage, all "homework" should take place in the school with enough staff to give individual attention where needed.

Then we need to change our entire outlook on expectations. We should EXPECT that every student get an A. That is, there is a certain body of knowledge and skills required for each section of the class and each student should master that before going onto the next. We would no longer group students by age but by mastery level. A 14 year old might be in what we consider 6th grade writing and 12th grade math, while his age mate might be in 7th grade history and 7th grade math.

[kathy001]

I love your idea about the mastery levels. But I do disagree with school staff supervising homework. We can not expect the school to take the place of the home. Although, it is unfortunate that some students have to do without the home support they need. Perhaps when students show that their work is suffering because of a lack of home support the school could become involved with a series of counseling sessions. If they can get the parents to show up, of course.

[RobinSeattle]

Great idea there Kathy.

Too bad the bureaucrats aren't as smart as you. Yours is a very simple concept but I think it would have good effect.

I also think we need to look at how we educate our students on the high school level differently. I believe that they should have an academic track and a vocational track, but where the student, in consultation with his parents, would make that decision and not school administrators, as to which track to opt for.