Forget Accountability, Pursue Success in Education

Mike Ford:

There are several words and phrases that confuse the debate on education reform: Apples-to-apples, finding what works, bringing to scale, and the worst of them all, accountability. The concepts described by these words and phrases are all premised on the idea that there is a single model of delivering quality education to all students.

No such model exists.

It follows that no matter how hard we try, we will not find what works; efforts to bring specific reforms to scale will ultimately fail, and it will always be a struggle to compare the performance of different types of schools. And when it comes to holding schools accountable, who decides for what and to whom?

Presumably in Wisconsin the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) is in charge of holding schools accountable. However, the granting of the state's No Child Left Behind waiver request is reportedly at risk because of vagueness in DPI's proposed accountability framework. The Wisconsin State Journal reports that a federal review found "Wisconsin's proposal for holding schools accountable is short on details and lacks ambitious goals to improve student achievement."

Posted by Jim Zellmer at May 19, 2012 3:40 AM
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