StickWithANose

It is tempting to comment on Team Obama’s education speech, specifically the school he chose to use for a backdrop. However, I came across this piece over at Tom Hoffman’s place that really caught my eye, because it does an excellent job of pointing out one of the more ludicrous elements of teacher accountability. It’s a line of argument that I make in an essay currently in press that will, ultimately, be put up behind a firewall, however I think it is an element of current education reform that everybody concerned should take note of as it offers us a clue as to what the underlying purpose of this current era of reform is really all about…

If teachers bear all the responsibility for student success, why are they given so little responsibility for what and how students learn?

Think about it: if a teacher’s not given any responsibility for how and what their students learn, then how can we hold them responsible for how and what students learn?  It’s accountability without autonomy, responsibility with no actual responsibility…

If we don’t trust teachers to do what’s in the best interest of students, then maybe they’re not the ones we should be pointing fingers at when students don’t learn.  If a teacher follows a scripted curriculum and students don’t learn, maybe we should point our fingers at the curriculum writers.  If a teacher follows the checklist the district passes down and students don’t learn, maybe we should point our fingers at the district personnel.  If a teacher does everything their principal demands of them and students don’t learn, maybe we should point our fingers at the principal.

If we think a teacher’s primary responsibility should be to stick to the curriculum, decorate their rooms the way the superintendent says to, and follow the instructions of their principal, then, by all means, we should evaluate them on these things and hold them accountable when they fail to do them.  But if, instead, we think a teacher’s primary responsibility is to ensure that students learn, maybe we should think about letting them determine what and how students learn before holding them accountable for this.

As I’ve said before, the targeting of teachers as the unsympathetic antagonist of the education reform narrative has more to do with the politics of education reform than any relation to the reality of schooling. Teachers are being put in a double bind in which they cannot win, and that is the point.