An Educational Contrarian

The question in the title to this blog has been posed to me twice in the last week, which I think is due to states releasing their accountability judgments of schools just before the kids all come back. Common sense might suggest that only an idiot would say no. I'm not an idiot (according to most people I meet) but I'm here to say that we'll do more harm than good if we oversimplify our responses and just say, "sure." First, we need to identify what we mean by a best teacher . I can do that easily. A best teacher is one who can maximize an educational benefit for the children in his or her classroom. We could get even more specific if we wanted and say that the best teacher for a child is the one who can maximize the benefit for that specific child, but for the sake of the argument here, lets keep it general: a best teacher is one who can maximize the educational benefit for children. Second, we need to identify what we mean by our most challenging school...

Just because someone offers you a snake oil cure for how to improve the quality of public schools doesn’t mean you have to swallow it. In fact, you shouldn’t. The latest snake oil cure in Texas is school accountability via school grades. I know a good bit about school accountability—I make a living from the topic and have a deep-seated belief that true accountability is both necessary and achievable. And that snake oil isn’t the answer. It’s easy to see the snake oil for what it is if you back up and ask a simple question: how does accountability work in successful organizations? I’ve explored the answer for years, written a book and a bunch of articles on the topic, and now work with schools to put in place what I’ve discovered. The answers to the question reveal the difference between a false accountability that will miss every policy goal it claims to support, and a true accountability that can move an organization in a desired direction. I’ll mention three principles of true ...

Education Commissioner Morath in the great state of Texas is about to release grades for schools. His quote: " The idea that the design of the system was meant to highlight both high levels of student achievement and high levels of educator impact makes this essentially the fairest system in the history of the state of Texas." (Article by Julie Chang in the Austin American Statesman, August 7, 2018--see it here --italics are mine.) The claim in italics is bogus. And it is easy for anyone to see why. Think of what it means to assess a student. You can do that by imagining the full range of assessment done to create understanding regarding a student or a school as a large sphere, with many layers to it. Trying to understand all the complexity to properly assess student or school needs and assign appropriate judgments is a constant, on-going thing. It requires trained teachers, lots of effort and energy, and proximity to the students being assessed. Tests are, by design...