Why Teachers Should Reject Results-Based Accountability
We may be in the middle of a pandemic but Chester Finn is worried about the tests. He’s not alone. Education reformers like Finn who’ve dedicated the last couple of decades to test-based school accountability are nervous about the growing backlash that threatens to undo their considerable efforts.
Finn, in this article, acknowledges the many problems with our test-driven education system but concludes that it’s not really the tests that are the problem. It’s accountability. Teachers, like everyone else, don’t want to be responsible for their students’ results. He sees tests as nothing more than an unwelcome messenger and asserts that “if testing vanished but some other form of results-based accountability remained, educators would complain just as much—and work just as hard to recruit allies among parents and others to discredit them.”
Finn is right. Educators would complain just as much. We would enlist others to our cause. We would continue to stomp our feet, inveigh, and even strike against whatever results-based accountability system CONTINUE READING: Why Teachers Should Reject Results-Based Accountability - Teacher Habits