Many educators are fighting tooth and nail against accountability formulas that will judge the effectiveness of their teaching. In other words, we never know what we are going to get at our classroom door at the beginning of each year, so we should never be held to a specific standard.
I’ve even heard teachers, after looking at prior student test scores, say “I can get them to grow, but I can’t get them all the way up to the benchmark,” – all this BEFORE they’ve even met the kids!
We wouldn’t allow that in any of the service industries that we frequent – for example a plumber comes and says, “Well, I’m pretty sure I can’t meet your expectations, but I’ll be able to help your problem at least a little bit.” We wouldn’t stand for it, so why do we perpetuate it?
Accountability will allow us to bring definitive value to excellent teaching because my experience in field tells me that excellent teaching gets excellent results – every time.