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What Can Teachers Really Be Accountable For?
By Dorothy Rich
With so much current pressure about teacher accountability, it’s vital for teachers to ask ourselves: What can we really be accountable for?
Discussion/Reflection Questions
- What is really under teacher control? What isn’t?
- What do parents and the public have to understand about accountability…that they don’t yet understand?
- What measures other than test scores should be provided as accountability measures?
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With so much current pressure about teacher accountability, it’s vital for teachers to ask ourselves: What can we really be accountable for?
Do parents expect too much of teachers? Too little? And is there any way to make it “just right”?
These days, especially, everyone seems to want teachers to be able to do everything. When teachers can’t or when they don’t, parents are disappointed and angry. I don’t excuse teachers who ought to be more competent nor do I excuse incompetence in doctors and other professionals.
The truth is that teachers are like everybody else, but everybody wants us be a lot better. That’s part of what is so troubling.
We teachers are dumb and smart in some of the same ways that other people are. That includes doctors and lawyers who make mistakes or who don’t care enough about their work. Sure, there is more spending on schools, still not enough. Sure, teachers today are not like we once were. No more Miss Prim and Proper leading a spinster life away from the rough and tumble of daily life.
Yet, expectations from earlier years still hang on. A parent told me recently: “I am disgusted with the teachers around me. They don’t know grammar. They seem afraid of simple arithmetic. They wear trashy clothes. We need teachers who are great examples and deserve to be respected.”
Then there is the other side. A reader writes about her daughter teaching her first year in senior high: “Many of her students are classified for Special Education, yet the supporting teacher is not present regularly. Many students live in group or foster homes, and move from relative to relative. Out of one hundred students, only four parent/guardians showed up for back to school night. Some students have children of their own. Almost all do not do any homework. The school does not have enough books. What my daughter has brought in to supplement school supplies has been stolen.”
Not all teachers face these conditions. Yet, many of us do. That’s why it’s a start but it’s not good enough just to raise standards or get new tests or a new curriculum.
Students bring their problems from the home and community into the classroom. Then, we expect teachers on their own to solve them. Would we send a doctor in to do an operation without supplies or without backup support from a team of nurses and caregivers? The answer is clear.
Certainly, there are teachers who should not be teaching in the first place. Maybe they should be in quiet offices. Their skills in English and math may be too low. Some teachers are arrogant. Some are bullies. No excuses for this, but policing the professions is not easy, either in education or in medicine. Some teachers need to be in other lines of work, just as doctors do.
We need real expectations about schooling. We need an understanding about what teachers can really be accountable for.
As a teacher and a trainer of teachers, I have a deep commitment to accountability and to what I believe that we can realistically hold teachers accountable for. Included on this list are:
- A classroom that provides the structure and discipline needed for effective learning.
- Teacher knowledge of the subject, for teaching effectively.
- A teacher’s personal commitment to work hard, to be caring, to be a learner, to be enthusiastic.
- Teachers paying attention to each child and treating each child fairly.
- Teachers working with students’ families to help children learn. This is what I wish that we teachers could be accountable for – but we can’t.
- Kids coming to school – adequately fed, rested, in good medical condition.
- Kids coming to school ready to learn with the attitudes and behaviors suitable for success in school.
- Kids coming to school from homes, rich or poor that encourage learning and respect for learning.
Accountability, while a useful concept, is a limited one. Too much big stuff happens outside of school, and it determines what happens inside of school and on the tests.
Parents need to understand this. We have to put this important message across – not as an excuse but as the reality that it is.
Readers, please let me know what you would add or subtract from this accountability list. What do you want to be held accountable for?
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About Dorothy Rich…
  Dr. Dorothy Rich is founder and president of the nonprofit Home and School Institute, MegaSkills Education Center in Washington. She is the author of MegaSkills and developer of the MegaSkills Teacher Training Programs. For additional information:” www.MegaSkillsHSI.org.
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