Why Are Teachers Exempt from Accountability?
I've worked in a number of industries and professions in my adult life. I've been a logistics officer in the Air Force, a sourcing professional working on the development of new CT scanners, a quality professional targeted with driving expense reduction in telecom, a banking professional, and a quality professional working to improve global supply chain performance at a top lock and faucet manufacturer. In all of these roles, I have been measured on tangible results, and held accountable for achieving them. Indeed, in most cases my pay was dependent to some extent on achieving performance objectives.
This is not unusual; indeed, it is typical of most professions.
Why, then, should teachers be exempt?
We are constantly told how important teachers are. Fine. But I would argue that U.S. warplanes being able to fly is important, diagnostic medical equipment is important, having the amount of money in your bank accounts being accurate and secure is important.
If you don't buy that, there are surely other important jobs with high standards of accountability.
Doctors are held accountable by licensing boards, by the hospital employing them, by the public they treat.
Police officers are held accountable by their departments, by outside government bodies, and by the public they serve.
Businessmen are held accountable by various government agencies, by their boards of directors, by Wall Street, and by their customers.
All are measured in a number of ways on the results they produce, whether it be mortality rate, crime rate, or stock price.
Why, then, are teachers to be exempt from this, given the multibillion dollar industry in public education we've created and entrusted to them?
That's what Jay Tea at Wizbang! wants to know.
That's what I'd like to know.
And I bet you'd like to know it too.
If teaching is so important, isn't it important to measure the professionals paid to do it on how well they do it?
Seems pretty elementary to me.
This is not unusual; indeed, it is typical of most professions.
Why, then, should teachers be exempt?
We are constantly told how important teachers are. Fine. But I would argue that U.S. warplanes being able to fly is important, diagnostic medical equipment is important, having the amount of money in your bank accounts being accurate and secure is important.
If you don't buy that, there are surely other important jobs with high standards of accountability.
Doctors are held accountable by licensing boards, by the hospital employing them, by the public they treat.
Police officers are held accountable by their departments, by outside government bodies, and by the public they serve.
Businessmen are held accountable by various government agencies, by their boards of directors, by Wall Street, and by their customers.
All are measured in a number of ways on the results they produce, whether it be mortality rate, crime rate, or stock price.
Why, then, are teachers to be exempt from this, given the multibillion dollar industry in public education we've created and entrusted to them?
That's what Jay Tea at Wizbang! wants to know.
That's what I'd like to know.
And I bet you'd like to know it too.
If teaching is so important, isn't it important to measure the professionals paid to do it on how well they do it?
Seems pretty elementary to me.
posted by Teflon at 8:37 AM
6 comments
6 Comments:
Teflon, a pithy topic! The teachers you have in mind are probably government employees. At all but the most local levels of government accountability is a concept arising mostly in salary determinations.
As taxpayers, we receive no regularly audited, financial statements with our tax returns (crude pie charts, if we are lucky). In your private industry experiences it is likely you encountered ISO 9000-series type standards, which hold every employee accountable in some ways for delivery of performance.
My first thought after learning about ISO quality standards was that we also need desparately a version of them for governments to assure taxpayers' minimal expectations are met at lowest cost and highest quality.
How is it, for instance, that government burial insurance still pays only $255 while inflation has increased average burial cost to $6,000? How can congress be so generous with its own salaries and pensions when the government's customers are treated so shabbily? Please, don't get me wrong with that example, I am not in favor of more perks for taxpayers, but am even less in favor of congress deciding its own salary and benefits.
The federal government requires quality standards when it is a customer. It is about time that the requirement became an accountable, two-way street. Just a thought.
The problem with holding someone accountable is creating a standard against which you measure their success.
It's easy to measure the success of shipment and delivery of a product. It's easy to measure the output of manufacturing. It's easy to measure the quality of those products.
When you're product is something as abstract as human learning, it become more difficult to measure. However, that is what the whole No Child Left Behind program is attempting to do. It's the first federal program that sets a national standard and holds the schools accountable for a student's performance. The schools, in turn, hold the teachers to a standard and are accountable for their student's performance.
Holding teachers accountable in this way is a very good thing. I completely agree with you that there has to be accountability. But, and it's a BIG but, in order to meet this accountability teachers are teaching their students to regurgitate information for the test rather than actually teaching the kids to learn things.
It's a very difficult problem and is much more difficult to solve than simply saying, "Make them accountable."
I haven't read the Wizbang! link, so I do apologize if I repeated anything Jay said.
And, after reading Jay's post, apparently I made the very argument he's talking about. What he fails to see, though, is that teaching to the test is the worst way of teaching. Studies repeatedly show that students have the worst retention rate when taught in this manner.
They will not, as he says, "have what the test-makers (and the people who hired the test-makers) consider the bare minimums to receive their diplomas." They will have that info at the time of the test. Maybe, only maybe, a little while afterwards.
Cullen, since you took time for two comments, allow me.
- ISO 9002 standards, for instance apply to service industries (you mentioned a disconnect between teaching and manufacturing).
- Functions such as employee education and ongoing training are well covered in ISO standards and, in a manner that does not consider teaching to tests adequate by any means.
- Underperforming teachers are losing the marketplace battle for accountability because their competition is not only better teachers within public schools, private schools and vouchers, but home schooling, too, is becoming more common and demonstrating superior preparation for life as well as higher education, in many instances.
Underpriveleged students deserve the best educations their parent(s) can obtain for them. The dirty secret is that many do not have the support of a family. To me, this unfortunate fact of the liberal lie further underscores the value of superior teachers. Instead, teacher's unions claim the fault is the parents'. How pathetic is that?
Vigilis, I am not familiar with ISO 9002 standards, but I will investigate. If there exists standards that address these issues, that would be fantastic.
No Child Left Behind does not. At least not in a workable manner.
I completely agree that children deserve the best education available. Considering what our children are and are going to be to our nation, it makes complete sense to invest in their future. However, there are lots of opportunities available to parents in the form of vouchers, charter schools and the like.
To a degree, it is a failure of parents. If they're not seeking the best forms of education for their kids, that's a failure. It's also our responsibility to keep that fire that is a need for knowledge burning bright in our children. I know it's something I think about daily when I talk to my kids.
How do we measure education?
A thorny problem indeed, but fortunately wise men long ago invented "tests"---I'm told teachers have some familiarity with them; perhaps we could use those?
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