Student Progress in Learning: Teacher Responsibility, Accountability, and Reality.

Abstract

Educator accountability for student progress in learning goes hand-in-hand with the social contract that assigns responsibility for education to schools. From this perspective accountability rests most heavily with teachers, since they are the most directly responsible for learning, but it extends to specialists, school administrators, and school board members as well. To accommodate the realities of classrooms, schools, families, and communities, however, the caveat is added that teacher accountability needs to be thought of as both conditional and collective. The implications of this view are discussed for teacher work, teaching as a profession, and the meaning of “reasonable and defensible” standards of performance when addressing the issue of educator accountability for student learning. Illustrative criteria of accountability are proposed, which the author believes to represent a realistic balance between the ethical obligations of a profession, the dependence of citizenry on these obligations being met, and the hard realities encountered in attempting to meet them.