On Accountability:

We are doing a disservice to our educators and students. In the same way that change is top-down, so is accountability.

Accountability must be measured differently for each of the three main populations of district students:

1. There will always be students who give the appearance of not wanting to participate in school. When these students fail it is because the School Board, District Administration, and Building-level Administration has failed in policy and approach to these learners. These students need to be identified, their motivations acknowledged, and an educational alternative employed. Too often we use social promotion as a way to deal with these students, rather than intervention.

2. When a special education student fails, it calls for a thorough audit of that student’s IEP and a determination of whether FAPE has occurred. We need to ask the hard questions: Is that student in the right program? Have we fully supported and empowered our direct education providers? Are the teachers educated to the best practices for the condition that a particular student is challenged by? Are the special education department and IEP team using the parents as an invaluable resource? Have we failed this student because we are too guided by the preconceived notions of a disability?

3. Who should be held accountable when our “typical” students fail? We need to remodel our view of accountability for this population. Decades of social promotion, educating students to minimum standards, and failure to share accountability across the board has created generations of students who start and end their school career below the national average. We need to stop teaching to an out-dated and underperforming assessment test and start teaching to our students’ needs and the requirements of an ever-evolving job market. Success should be measured more by the gains a student makes during the school year and less by a numeric score on the DSTP. Educators and Administrators should be held equally accountable for ensuring that all students make quantitative and qualitative progress.