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Teaching accountability

by Miki Saxon

By CandidProf, who teaches physics and astronomy at a state university. He shares his thoughts and experiences teaching today’s students anonymously every Thursday—anonymously because that’s the only way he can be truly candid. Read all of CandidProf here.

Wes Ball, Tuesday’s regular guest, posted his response to my posting about the Dallas Independent School District grading policy.

He makes a point that a nurturing approach is a good one.  And I agree with him that giving students the opportunity to fix mistakes within defined boundaries is a good learning strategy, and one that I routinely use for my college students.

responsibility.jpgHowever, the key point is in the definition of those boundaries.

DISD has virtually removed boundaries. That is not acceptable.  If you go to a doctor for a serious illness, would you trust your doctor’s treatment if you knew that he or she virtually never got it right the first time?  Just what are the defined limits of acceptable shortfalls?  Sometimes, you just have to get it right.

Just look around and you will see the consequences of teaching people that they don’t have to be held responsible. If you teach students that sort of thing, then they will go into the workforce with that attitude.  And then you will have such things as lenders not thinking through who they lend money to, borrowers not thinking if they can repay loans, and top executives for major corporations not looking towards the future of their companies.  After all, if everything goes bust somebody will come along and bail them out and make everything OK, right?

But I think that the attitude that it is OK to set up policies that do not hold students responsible for their own misdoings is simply a carryover from the DISD’s top leaders’ own philosophies.

Now, it turns out that they don’t want to be held responsible for their own screw ups.  Apparently, DISD hired some new teachers last year, but forgot to think about how to pay for them.  This led to a $64,000,000 budget shortfall in 2007. That is expected to soar to nearly $84,000,000 this year.

How can top executives in charge of such a large district foul up enough to miss out on the fact that they were spending 64 million dollars more than they were taking in through taxes? This is not a small sum of money.  This is not simply a minor accounting error.  This is not just someone putting some expenditure in the wrong column of a data table or listing it under one account instead of another.  This is a major blunder.

But are the top school district executives held to account? Uh, no. The ones being held to account for this are the teachers who are facing losing their jobs.  Up to 700 teachers may be laid off in the middle of the school year.

What effect will that have on students who started learning from one teacher only to be shoved into another, over crowded, classroom with a different teacher?

And what of the teachers, themselves?  If they lose their jobs, they lose their way to make a living.  Teaching jobs don’t pay a lot to start with.  And teaching jobs are keyed to the academic year.  Teaching jobs begin at the start of the school year.  It is almost unheard of for a teacher to be hired in the middle of the year.  So, these teachers are out of a job until next August at the earliest.  Is that fair to them?

No, I think that accountability is important.  I think that standards need to be held fast.  I think that the bar needs to be set, and students, administrators, employees, and everyone needs to make it.  A good leader needs to encourage his followers to meet the challenge and to make the grade.

And if they don’t, then there must be consequences.  If the leader screws up, then he needs to face the consequences, too.

I’m including links to various news stories for more in depth information.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/091708dnmetdisdcuts.1bd57b1.html

http://cbs11tv.com/business/education/disd.teacher.layoffs.2.819119.html

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/DN-disdbudget_23met.ART.State.Edition2.26b709a.html

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Image credit: hollowed CC license

5 Responses to “Teaching accountability”
  1. Wes Ball Says:

    I agree wholeheartedly that boundaries are essential in both the teaching and the business environments. There has to be a challenge to reach beyond what is comfortable or easy to attain something better. I also agree that boundaries have all but disappeared in many schools in an effort to help students “succeed” with the result that there is even more failure.

    In my article on Tuesday, I was talking less about Dallas than I was about the corporate environment, just using your article as a jumping off place.

    I have to say, however, that I went to high school in Dallas. I went to 15 other schools in other parts of the country before graduating from college and my time in Dallas was the worst education I received anywhere. Because it was high school, I came in contact with more teachers in those three years (they had 3-year HS there – 10th-12th grade) than I had in all the previous years combined, but none of those in Dallas offered any nurturing, inspiration, or challenge. I was so bored and things were so easy that I gave up even trying — something that cost me dearly my first year at The University of Texas in Austin. In fact, one of the things I learned to “fit in” there was how to speak with poor grammar and to not be the star of the class, as I typically had been as I grew up.

    It took my failing out my freshman year in college to get me jump-started again. I ended up graduating with a 3.4 grade-point through my own motivation.

    If I could wish for anything for these Dallas students, it would be a teacher who obviously cares for the students but who challenges them to do better than they have ever done before in a way that makes them not want to let him down. That’s what real leaders (and teachers) do.

  2. Miki Saxon Says:

    Not in Dallas, Wes. In Dallas teachers who challenge are fired.

  3. Jean Murray Says:

    I agree with CandidProf. I am an administrator at an institution of “higher education” (the “higher” part is dubious) and we get many students who figure the rules don’t apply to them (sounds like a lot of investment bankers, doesn’t it?). My favorite excuse is “I tried hard; I studied; how could you give me a failing grade?” As if a grade were somehow a GIFT and you got it if you just showed up and TRIED. They got that attitude in high school.

  4. Miki Saxon Says:

    But, Jean, they’re special. Just ask mom and dad, who have been telling them that their whole life, who gave any teacher who had the temerity to give them a bad grade what for (or got them fired) and generally protected their little darlings from anything resembling responsibility.

    How can you be so cruel as to stomp on their rose colored glasses by forcing them to deal with reality.

    Shame on you and keep up the good work!

  5. Leadership failure at the start Says:

    […] The effort eliminate accountability and further increasing that sense of entitlement to further trash future leaders’ ethical base is in full swing. (Texas seems to be taking a leading role in both. Read this, this and this.) […]

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