School accountability is here to stay

Two articles the current Education Week illustrate the paradox of school accountability.  Educators want more autonomy (and they need it to meet accountability goals) but the public demands -- and has a right -- to objective measures of student achievement.  Are these goals mutually exclusive?

The first article profiles a nation-wide group of educators who are planning a march on Washington at the end of next month, called "Save Our Schools" (SOS, get it?).  The organizers hope to launch a grassroots movement that will challenge the use of high-stakes accountability testing as a measure of student success, school performance, and especially for teacher evaluation.  A whole slew of high-profile organizations have endorsed the event, including the International Reading Association, the National Association of Secondary School Principals, and of course, the major teachers unions.  Collectively, these groups decry the relentless emphasis on testing for having negative educational consequences on students, and for being inadequate measures of student learning.

The march isn't exclusively about opposition to testing, however:

The four “guiding principles” for the march are: equitable funding for all public school communities; an end to high-stakes testing used for the purpose of student, teacher, and school evaluation; curriculum developed for and by local school communities; and teacher, family, and community leadership in forming public education policies.

Setting the issue of testing aside for a moment, these are worthy goals.  Inequities in education funding across schools and districts is a huge issue, though one that is not easily solved.  As for the last two points -- local development of curriculum and greater involvement from teachers, families and communities -- no arguments here.  One of the things that troubles me about the move toward Common Core standards is the potential loss of freedom for states and local districts to innovate their own approaches to teaching and learning and to meet the individual needs of their own students.  And who can argue with the value of more stakeholder involvement in developing education policy?

I also share many concerns about the role testing has come to play in the learning process.  I've seen schools and districts game the system, pouring resources into students who are more easily moved to proficiency for short term, one-year bumps in test scores, usually at the expense of students who are way behind their peers and need assistance the most.  I've seen schools become obsessed with last minute test preparations, pep rallies, and other strategies that may pay off, again in the short run, but which have little to do with long-term, sustained improvements in student learning.  And I'm definitely familiar with the flaws that exist within the accountability system from the seemingly arbitrary nature of accountability formulas to the myriad problems of NCLB.

But at the end of the day, taxpayers pour billions of dollars into public schools, and they have a right to know that we're doing our jobs effectively.  They deserve a solid, objective measure of student learning, something better than, "Take our word for it; teachers work really hard." 

Because the bottom line is that we are still not making the kinds of learning gains our students deserve, as demonstrated by the second article from Education Week.  Data from the most recent National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP, which is a well-respected test of student learning) indicates that nation wide, only about 12 percent of students have a proficient knowledge of U.S. history.  With the exception of notable improvements for minority students, this is exactly where our students performed in 2006.  This is a deplorable statistic.

We need tests to give us standarized, objective feedback on how we are performing as educators.  We need tests to push us to keep getting better, to counteract the ever-present tendency to blame poverty for low student achievement (i.e., poor teacher and principal performance), and to show the public what they are getting in return for their multi-billion dollar investment.

That doesn't mean our tests are perfect, and we must relentless push to improve the accountability system (which might include getting the federal government out of the education business altogether and allowing states to set their own education standards and agendas).  Educators and the public alike need to have faith in the tests students take.  And once those tests are established, schools should be given maximum autonomy and flexibility to figure out how to get students to that level of achievement.

Short of a full-blown voucher system in which schools have the ultimate form of accountability to their constituents, school accountability testing is here to stay.  We can work to make it better, but wishing it will go away is truly wishful thinking.