Russ on Reading: Accountability in Public Schools: The Three-Legged Stool

Russ on Reading: Accountability in Public Schools: The Three-Legged Stool:

Accountability in Public Schools: The Three-Legged Stool

My uncle was a dairy farmer in North Carolina. In the fifties, before automation hit the dairy industry, I used to watch him drag his old, wooden, three-legged stool from cow to cow and deftly milk each cow with a steady, rhythmic motion, as streams of milk splashed into his milking can. Occasionally, he would allow his "city kid" nephew to sit on the stool and give it a try. In many ways that stool - sturdy, steady and reliable- was the foundation on which my uncle's business was built.

The educational age of accountability, which Hoffman and Pearson in the book Research-Based Practices for Teaching the Common Core (2015), identify as beginning in about 1985, was built on a three-legged foundation as well. The original formulation of accountability called for

• Holding students accountable for learning content and processes
• Holding teachers accountable for student learning
• Holding states and policymakers accountable for providing the resources that would create the opportunity to learn (Hoffman and Pearson, 2015).

Early on in the accountability movement there seemed to be a recognition that there was aquid pro quo to requiring student and teacher accountability. If students and teachers were to be held accountable, then the states must provide the resources to achieve the desired Russ on Reading: Accountability in Public Schools: The Three-Legged Stool: