Why Commissioner Morath's idea of moving the accountability bar won't do what he claims

(Written in response to Children at Risk supporting Commissioner Morath's desire to move the bar on the state accountability ratings such that a school with a similar result two years running will receive significantly different ratings in those years.)

I would love to sit down with the Children at Risk Folks and show just how misguided their support of TEA’s “higher standards” is. Let me first agree, however, that we should absolutely and constantly increase our educational capacity to effectively serve children and prepare them for life. Everything is right with that sentiment.

 

But states run their accountabilities based on compliance, and therein lies the truly catastrophic problem: no amount of compliance has ever made an organization more effective. But you already know that. Almost every driver on the street has complied with the requirements to obtain a driver’s license, but that doesn’t also mean we are a country of continuously improving drivers. Almost every school in America complies with FERPA requirements (the privacy rules regarding student data) but having complied they do not also declare their teaching as effective. Every practicing lawyer complied with the requirement to pass the bar, but that does not mean you can presume every law firm runs an ethical and effective practice.

 

What states have done at the behest of the Federal government is create complex compliance formulas into which they pour test and other data that spit out labels according to a school’s level of compliance. It may not feel that way given that testing and graduation rates have long been seen as legitimate research sources for understanding schools, but it doesn’t matter how relevant a research tool may be. When schools (or any organization) are asked to comply with a line drawn in the sand based on a piece of research the usefulness of the research as research goes out the window. You will be left with a judgment that may declare a school effective or ineffective, but that judgment will be as invalid as declaring that an organization filled with people who complied with a criminal background check are all great at their jobs. Thinking it won’t make it so, and acting on it will make the organization less, not more effective.

 

Which explains why after thirty years of test-based accountability almost none of the far-reaching policy goals behind education have been met—policy makers selected an accountability methodology that isn’t interested in schools becoming more effective. And so the harder schools try within that model, the less capacity they will have to focus on how to become more effective, which in turn puts them at risk for becoming less effective than they were. And now TEA wants to double down on what has not and cannot work.

 

Google Campbell’s Law if you doubt me—he says it way better than I do.

 

So when Children at Risk or any other advocacy group stands up and supports TEAs desire for higher standards, all I ask is that they realize what they are asking for: the compliance line to be moved. And then I would remind them that no organization, ever, has made itself more effective through compliance. Which leaves a legitimate goal dangling in the air that will never be achieved through the selected means to get there.

 

So please don’t anyone blindly support TEA’s desire to move the bar and increase the public’s perception of school failure that is the only guaranteed outcome from this nonsense. Rather, please oppose a methodology that will not aid the larger goals Children at Risk and so many other well-intentioned organizations have.

 

And realize that there are accountability models out there that are exclusively about an organization’s effectiveness and that can be shown to be infinitely better at encouraging educational effectiveness. Which is truly what we should all be advocating for.