Backward School Accountability

Over the past 30 years or longer school reformers have implemented a host of strategies under the stated purpose of improving schools.  Those strategies have included rigorous high-stakes standardized tests, increased prerequisites for teacher certification, teacher competency tests, teacher retention based on students’ test scores, school choice, financial vouchers for parents, standardized curriculum, etc., etc.  Each of these strategies has focused on the students and the teachers, and if schools did not show improvement using these strategies professional educators could be removed or replaced. 

It is almost funny that when we learned these strategies do not work, state and federal governments have implemented even more of those very same strategies.  If the high-stakes test does not work to improve student learning as measured by the high-stakes test let’s make the stakes higher.  Brilliant!  If certifying teachers is more difficult and students do not perform better let’s make getting a teacher certificate even more demanding.  If public schools are not performing better let’s take some money away from them and fund a charter school!  And if that does not work, let’s let the rich parents who already pay school taxes in addition to private school tuition be exempt from school taxes via vouchers.  Brilliant!  All these strategies have served to stress the public school system, reduce money for the public school system but create profits for testing companies and charter school companies while students languish and teachers crack under the pressure.

So, we must assume that those who implement such strategies do not do so to improve public schools.  They do so because they are willing to support the results, that is, schools do not improve but private companies make a lot of money.  The more pressure on the public school the more money the private enterprises make.  That is the most immoral formula there is, make kids suffer so that entrepreneurs can make more money. 

What we need to do is to turn the accountability upside down.  If a legislature proposes high stakes tests and the evidence is outcomes have not improved then we need to abandon that effort and remove those legislators.  Same thing true for charter schools.  If a state implements charter schools and the public schools do not do better, then the charter schools must go and the legislators who created them.  On and on and on.

Suddenly the implementation of a so called reform to improve public schooling will be revealed for what it really is, not a strategy to improve public schools, but a strategy to improve the wealth of a few.  Any legislator guilty of such an implementation should probably be prosecuted for child abuse, but I would be content if they were summarily dismissed and a special election was held. 

Do not tell me you are here to help when 30 years of data prove you have done nothing but hurt the children in public schools and professional educators while enriching the likes of Betsy DeVos and empowering the likes of Dan Patrick.  If that is not a crime it sure as hell ought to be.