Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
DYER
By H y S. Dyer,
vice pr Sl&nt, retired,
Ed n stoi.og,Service
30
The Data Reduction Problem Ooo oOOOoOOOOoOOOOOOOoOOOOOOoooo oo oooo oo ooo ooo oo oooo o 32
Constants and Variables of Teacher Accountability o oo oooo oo ooo ooo ooo ooo o 35
Accountability to Whom? OOOOOo OOoo ooo oOoOoOooOOOOOOOOOOOooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo oo 35
Accountability for What? ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo ooo oo 38
Minimum Requirements-The Constants 00 000 000 000 00 0000 00 00 0000 00 000 00 39
Good Works-The Variables OOOOoOOOOOOOOOOOOOoOOOOoOOooooooooOOOOOOOOoOOOOOoOOOO 41
INTRODUCTION
1
In the middle part of the essay I shall briefly discuss a perva
sive problem that must be continually in mind if the principle of
accountability is ever to become as functional in education as
one might hope. This is the problem of providing the flow of in
formation necessary to keep the public adequately informed and
school systems adequately responsive to the needs of students
and the needs of society.
In the last section I shall attempt to put all the pieces of the
puzzle together by examining the role of the individual teacher,
because this is the person in whom any effort to make educa
tional accountability workable must begin and end.
Throughout the discussion I shall take note of two tendencies
that appear to be working at cross-purposes in the effort to hold
educators accountable. On the one hand, there is the tendency to
force all units of the educational system into rigidly uniform opera
tional patterns to provide the linkages among the units that seem
necessary in a fluid and technologically interdependent society.
On the other hand, there is the tendency to give each unit, how
ever small, a free hand to work out its own destiny in light of the
needs and aspirations peculiar to the students and the community
that the unit is attempting to serve.
In my view, the principle of accountability, if seen as a whole
and if properly implemented, offers the chief hope of reconciling
these opposing tendencies.
THE FOUR ASPECTS
1
in several ways. He is expected to return it on time and in good
condition so that others may use it. He should not borrow the
book in the first place unless he has a real need for it, lest he
deprive others whose need may be urgent; and while the book is
in his hands, he should actually use it. If he loses or damages the
book, he is obliged to replace it or to furnish a well-substantiated
explanation that the loss or damage was not his fault. In this
latter connection he should, in his own interest, make sure that
the book is in good condition before it is signed out to him.
We assume that underlying these considerations is an enforce
ment procedure that requires the student to pay a penalty if he
fails to meet his obligations in regard to the book. And this leads
to a further consideration that must be strongly emphasized as
we round out the idea of accountability for the things of educa
tion: before the transaction takes place, the school librarian, or
someone else clearly designated, has an obligation to the student
to make sure that he understands all the rules and regulations
under which he is to be held accountable for the book he borrows.
This parable of the library book illustrates seven points hav-
ing to do with accountability for school things in general:
1. Before anything, from buildings to pencils, is acquired
by the schools, someone in the system should be obliged
to determine that the item to be purchased will meet a gen
uine need of the system. Since there are always competing
needs and competing opinions about which needs are the
most urgent, such a determination is often extraordinarily
difficult. Nevertheless, it is a determination that must be
made by somebody, and whoever makes it has a responsi
bility for acting on the basis of the best evidence he can
assemble on the probable uses to which the item will be
put.
2. Similarly, whoever is responsible for acquiring the item
must also be responsible for making sure that the item is
in good condition before it is accepted. This would seem
to be routine, but when schools find themselves with equip
ment that is forever breaking down or wearing out or be
ing used up before its time, we can only infer that some
where along the line the routine has failed, and the prin
ciple of accountability for things has not been working.
3. Following the acquisition of anything, there is an obli
gation on the part of various persons in the system to make
sure that it is used to good purpose. When new books lie
idle on the shelves or in cartons, when film projectors ga
ther dust in the basement, when school buildings are
empty more than half the time they could be profitably
occupied, it is reasonable to assume that several people
should be called to account for not using available re
sources to the fullest extent.
4. By the same token, accountability for things implies
that school property will not be misused: that it will be
maintained in good condition, that supplies will not be
lost or wasted, and that they can be found whenever they
are needed.
5. If an item is in fact misused, accountability for things
further implies that the person involved in the misuse shall
either furnish an acceptable explanation or make good
any damage he may have caused.
6. It follows from the foregoing that there should be some
procedure of enforcement based on a set of rules and regu
lations for acquiring, distributing, and using the property,
accompanied by appropriate penalties for failure.
7. Finally, the principle of accountability for the things
schools use implies that rules and regulations shall be
framed and disseminated so that everyone who uses school
property, whether student, teacher, administrator, or who
ever, shall know and understand what the rules and regu
lations are.
It should be clear that accountability for educational things is
an important aspect of the overall principle of educational ac
countability. It is, however, an aspect that can, and often does,
get emphasized out of all proportion to its importance.
Too great a preoccupation with the things of a school, as evi
denced in a perpetual and frenetic checking up on minutiae,
sometimes tends seriously to inhibit the freedom of teachers to
teach and of students to learn.
Accordingly, if accountability for things is not to distort the
fundamental purposes of education, it must involve an element
of trust that the great majority of people in the system will have
respect for the property they all hold in common and will exer
cise good judgment in distributing and using it. To operate on the
assumption that nobody in a school can be trusted for anything
only tends to make the principle of accountability for things un
workable and self-defeating.
2
are the students upon whom the weight of the whole authority
structure rests. Presumably they are accountable to their teachers
while in school.
Electorate
I I I I I
I I I I I
-----_1 _I 1I _I1_I 1_1_-----
I
IIIII
Policy
Makers
I I I
I I I
-r r1 _
I I I
s u d e n s
Figure 1
Hourglass Model of a School System
1
able a wealth of information about (1) the changes in students
that take place in each time period and (2) the many factors
inside and outside of school that may be affecting these changes
for better or worse.
Input EDUCATIONAL
Output
--------------- -----
(Student (Student
PROCESS
characteristics characteristics
before) after)
Figure 2
The Student-Change Model
of an Educational System
This information falls into four general categories which I call
input, educational process, surrounding conditions, and output.
These categories are defined as follows:
Output consists of all the comparable attributes of the same stu dent
when he has completed a segment at the point t 2• This is his final
status for that time period, and it is also his initial status for the
time period that follows.
Accountability to Whom?
Official hierarchy
Fellow
teachers Parents
s s
Figure 3
Persons to Whom a Teacher is Accountable
Figure 4
Constant Minimum Requirements and Variable Good Works
Expected of a Teacher
Figure 5
The Classroom Interaction Pattern
Despite all the theories that have been spun about the teach
ing-learning process, there can never be an absolute guarantee
that any given set of aaions by a teacher, or any given set of
reaaions on the part of students will produce any specific kind or
amount of learning. All learning is probabilistic. It is of the ut
most importance that this fact be recognized by teachers and
everybody else concerned with the education of the young. Fail
ure to recognize it can result in the sort of deadly routine that
takes students nowhere.
The classroom interaction pattern, if it is to have the best
chance of bringing about desirable learning, must be regarded
as in the nature of a continuous experiment. In this experiment
any num ber of alternatives are tried successively by the
teacher and the students until the hoped-for changes in the
students' develop mental status occur.
The teacher's obligation is to keep the experiment going and
to keep it under control. This means, first, that he shall use the
knowledge he has of his subject and of his students to help them
select alternatives that seem to have the highest probability of
paying off. It means, second, that he shall observe what hap pens
as carefully as he can, and alter his strategy as needed.
This model of the teaching process is admittedly somewhat
abstract, but it may nevertheless serve to suggest some of the
variables that must be considered if we are going to determine
the extent to which a teacher can be held accountable. For ex
ample, how much freedom is he allowed for initiating action
which he believes may help his students learn? How large a
variety of learning materials do he and his students have at their
disposal to choose from? To what extent is the classroom pro
cess hindered by inadequate physical space? By lack of continuity
because of student turnover and absenteeism? By outside dis
traaions and untoward interference? Such factors, all of which
can be observed, define the variable boundaries within which
any teacher may be held accountable for good works in dealing
with students in the classroom.
There are other types of good works for which a teacher
should be held accountable outside the classroom if his school
as a whole is to be the effective teaching organization it ought
to be. As I have suggested above, each teacher bears with his
fellow teachers, the administrative staff, and the students' parents
a joint responsibility for making sure that the end products of the
enterprise are as good as they can possibly be.
This implies that every teacher be accountable for exchanging
information, the best he can obtain, about how his students have
done and are doing and about any factors he knows of that may
be helping or hindering their development. It implies further that
each teacher shall share in the search for ways to make the in
structional process increasingly relevant to the students the
school serves.
The degree to which a teacher is to be held accountable for
participating in this joint effort is contingent in large measure
on the quality of administrative leadership. Does it invite such
participation or discourage it? How much time does it (or can it)
allocate for the effort? What resources in the form of consultant
help does it (or can it) make available to ensure that the collec
tive effort will be as fruitful of good works as possible?
The upshot of this overall approach to responsibility for good
works suggests that teacher accountability is a variable which de
pends upon a number of conditions that determine the scope of
the teaching act. The broader the scope, the more a teacher can
be held accountable for his professional behavior. The general
recognition of this principle is vital to the amount and quality of
learning that any school or school system can be expected to de
liver. It is therefore a principle that ought to be the prime con
cern of administrators and policy makers in fulfilling their own
obligation to inform the public not only about how well their
schools are serving the young, but also about the nature and
needs of education and what must be done to help teachers serve
students better.
The manuscripts for this series of fastbacks (Numbers 14-
20) have been solicited and edited by Pi Lambda Theta,
national honor and professional association for women in
education.
This book and others in the series are made available at low
cost through the contribution of the Phi Delta Kappa Educational
Foundation, established in 1966 with a bequest by George H.
Reavis. The Foundation exists to promote a better understand
ing of the nature of the educative process and the relation of
education to human welfare. It operates by subsidizing authors
to write booklets and monographs in nontechnical language so
that beginning teachers and the public generally may gain a
better understanding of educational problems.
The Foundation exists through the generosity of George
Reavis and others who have contributed. To accomplish the
goals envisaged by the founder the Foundation needs to en
large its endowment by several million dollars. Contributions
to the endowment should be addressed to The Educational
Foundation, Phi Delta Kappa, 8th and Union, Bloomington,
Indiana 47401. The Ohio State University serves as trustee for
the Educational Foundation.
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