When Policymakers Attack: Two Key Lessons
by Frederick M. Hess • Aug 10, 2012 at 9:22 am
Cross-posted from Education Week
Cross-posted from Education Week
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Over at This Week in Education, the sharp-penned John Thompson offered his take on Monday's RHSU post(in which I advised educators to get over their policy allergies). Thompson wrote, "When 'smart, talented leaders complain about ill-conceived accountability systems,' Hess tells them to, 'get over themselves.'" He's got that partly right--but not entirely.
I'm not telling educators to meekly accept ill-conceived accountability systems. What I'm telling them to do is stop complaining that policymakers want to hold schools accountable. As I noted Wednesday, I'm hugely in favor of educators offering up concrete, workable approaches to school and educator accountability (and, truth be told, so are most policymakers). Indeed, what's typically absent when so many educators lament the state of school reform today is an understanding of why contemporary approaches to school and system accountability (a la NCLB) or to teacher evaluation have tended to take the form of clumsy, heavy-handed mandates. I'd argue it's NOT because of nefarious philanthropists, a "neoliberal" cabal, or sheer idiocy, but for reasons that are much simpler and far less conspiratorial.
Starting in the 1990s, policymakers and advocates (especially progressives like Ted Kennedy, George Miller,