Teachers are accountable for skills, not results

I read this editorial about a month ago and since then had misplaced it. This morning I found the article again and decided to share it with you. I agree with Mr. Barkley’s thoughts and think that the many teachers in my family will agree.

The Columbus Dispatch : Teachers are accountable for skills, not results
Teachers are accountable for skills, not results
Saturday, August 2, 2008 3:03 AM

Jonathan Alter’s July 15 Forum column, “Put teachers at center of debate on education,” could not be more aptly titled. Unfortunately, however, while Alter’s frustration is understandable, his unenlightened solutions and uninformed commentary are all too common.

Setting the record straight, I spent 58 years in public education, and 45 of those years were in the employ of teachers unions. I served in a wide variety of positions, including the top executive position in two states, managed a national labor-management collaborative, consulted with large private foundations and wrote two books on the subject. I know more than a little bit about public education and its unions and their pitfalls and strengths.

I address three points raised by Alter. First, as I stated initially, the headline was right on. Teachers must be at the center of any debate over education. More often than not, they are left out, only to then be forced to implement the often-well-meaning and sometimes not-too-well-meaning schemes dreamed up by the lay public and politicians to direct school improvement. Of course, this is like telling your doctor or dentist how to solve whatever ails you. It is the uninformed amateurs telling the hugely better informed professionals how to do their work.

But there is a difference. Doctors and dentists can rightly assume the purpose for which you are seeing them. Professional educators are often at a complete loss as to what their constituency believes the primary aims of schools should be. This is because almost no boards of education and few education managers perform their single most important responsibility: engaging the public fully and regularly in determining the precise aims of the education system and how progress toward those aims is to be measured. Until that is done, teachers find themselves awash in myriad random measurements and floating aims. If it weren’t so serious, it’d be a joke.

Second, most people, including many educators themselves, accept that the long-standing practice of teachers operating largely in isolation from each other and as independent performers is the right way to organize schools. In addition, we have sorted education into separate and distinct disciplines that often never even talk to each other, much less plan and operate together. Neither of these traditional practices will produce the outcomes we expect and desire. Teaching is a team sport being carried out by individual performers and small, isolated groups. That approach will never produce optimal outcomes — assuming once again that we have established consensus as to our aims.

There is no more shortage of competence in education than there is in any other industry or endeavor. There is, however, an abundance of poorly managed competence. In other words, it’s the system and not the people that is the fundamental problem. The gurus of organizational effectiveness have been telling us that for years. It applies to education, as well.

Last, Alter raised the appropriate issue of accountability. Unfortunately, his presumed definition of accountability is result-oriented rather than process-oriented. This is a compelling and all too widely held position. It is unenlightened and dead wrong.

Accountability is first a matter of process, not results. It is a matter of holding people responsible only for that over which they have reasonable control. It is not about fixing blame. The only thing educators should be held accountable for is the understanding and application, with reasonable skill, of the best practices the system makes known to them and supports them in developing. The latter is where the problem lies in most poorly performing systems.

There is a difference between responsibility and accountability. We can make people professionally responsible for addressing a wide variety of matters, but we should hold them personally and professionally accountable only for doing the best they reasonably can. Doctors are not accountable for life and death — only for applying the best that is known about diagnosis and treatment.

BOB BARKLEY
Worthington