Accountability for Learning: How Teachers and School Leaders Can Take Charge.pdf (Teacher Empowerment)

Accountability for Learning How Teachers and School Leaders Can Take Charge Douglas B. Reeves Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development Alexandria,Virginia USA Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development 1703 N. Beauregard St. Alexandria, VA 22311-1714 USA Telephone: 800-933-2723 or 703-578-9600 Fax: 703-575-5400 Web site: http://www.ascd.org E-mail: member@ascd.org Gene R. Carter, Executive Director; Nancy Modrak, Director of Publishing; Julie Houtz, Director of Book Editing & Production; Deborah Siegel, Project Manager; Shelley Young, Senior Graphic Designer; Jim Beals, Typesetter; Dina Seamon, Production Specialist. Copyright  2004 by Douglas B. Reeves. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from ASCD. Readers who wish to duplicate material copyrighted by ASCD may do so for a small fee by contacting the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC), 222 Rosewood Dr., Danvers, MA 01923, USA (telephone: 978-750-8400; fax: 978-750-4470; Web: http://www.copyright.com). ASCD has authorized the CCC to collect such fees on its behalf. Requests to reprint rather than photocopy should be directed to ASCD’s permissions office at 703-578-9600. Cover art copyright  2004 by ASCD. ASCD publications present a variety of viewpoints. The views expressed or implied in this book should not be interpreted as official positions of the Association. Printed in the United States of America. ASCD Member Book, No. FY04-4 (January 2004, PC). ASCD Member Books mail to Premium (P), Comprehensive (C), and Regular (R) members on this schedule: Jan., PC; Feb., P; Apr., PCR; May, P; July, PC; Aug., P; Sept., PCR; Nov., PC; Dec., P. Paperback ISBN: 0-87120-833-4 • ASCD product #104004 • List Price: $23.95 ($18.95 ASCD member price, direct from ASCD only) e-books ($23.95): netLibrary ISBN 0-87120-957-8 • ebrary 0-87120-958-6 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Reeves, Douglas B., 1953Accountability for learning : how teachers and school leaders can take charge / Douglas Reeves. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-87120-833-4 (alk. paper) 1. Educational accountability--United States. 2. School improvement programs--United States. I. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. II. Title. LB2806.22.R44 2004 379.1’58--dc22 2003022597 ______________________________________________________ 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 For Alex Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1 The “A-Word”: Why People Hate Accountability and What You Can Do About It . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2 Accountability Essentials: Identifying and Measuring Teaching Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 3 The Accountable Teacher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 4 Teacher Empowerment: Bottom-Up Accountability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 5 A View from the District . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 6 The Policymaker’s Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 7 Putting It All Together: Standards, Assessment, and Accountability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 Appendix A: A Sample Comprehensive Accountability System . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Appendix B: Tools for Developing and Implementing an Accountability System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Appendix C: Contact Information for State Departments of Education and Other Organizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 Acknowledgments My first debt is to the thousands of teachers, leaders, board members, writers, policymakers, and colleagues who have been willing to engage me on the issues of educational accountability. Because they take the time and invest the energy to challenge me with their provocative insights and demands for practical solutions, I have been forced to reexamine my assumptions, admit my mistakes, and eat more than one slice of humble pie. They jolt me out of the ivory tower and confront me daily with the realities of financial crises, burned-out staff, and unmotivated students, parents, and even some educators. Amid these doses of unpleasant reality, they also provide compelling case studies of success in the most unlikely places. Just as their candor challenges me, their stories of success give me energy, hope, and enthusiasm. This book marks my first collaboration with ASCD, a publisher that has brought to educators around the world some of the most important books of the last several decades. I am honored to be in vi Acknowledgments vii their company. As always, Esmond Harmsworth of the Zachary Shuster Harmsworth Literary Agency attended to every detail to make this partnership work smoothly. Footnotes and reference listings are sadly inadequate ways to acknowledge the intellectual debt that I owe to many leading thinkers in this field. I have in particular been influenced by the following scholars, some of whom are cited in this volume, and the rest of whom influence my writing in ways that extend far beyond a footnote: Anne Bryant, Lucy McCormick Calkins, Linda DarlingHammond, Daniel Goleman, Audrey Kleinsasser, Robert Marzano, Alan Moore, Mike Schmoker, and Grant Wiggins. My colleagues at the Center for Performance Assessment are part of every project for which I receive credit far out of proportion to my own contribution. For this book, I am particularly indebted to Cathy Shulkin, whose work on the appendices and references were essential to the timely completion of the project. How she did this while balancing a thousand details of my professional life is a mystery, but I suspect it has a lot to do with intelligence, commitment, and an extraordinary work ethic. Larry Ainsworth, Eileen Allison, Arlana Bedard, Jan Christinson, Donna Davis, Cheryl Dunkle, Tony Flach, Michele LePatner, Dave Nagel, Elaine Robbins-Harris, Stacy Scott, Earl Shore, Jill Unziker-Lewis, Mike White, Steve White, Nan Woodson, and my other colleagues at the Center have contributed not only to my thinking about accountability but to my daily intellectual growth. Anne Fenske, the Center’s executive director, and our colleagues deliver more than a thousand professional development engagements every year for hundreds of thousands of educators and school leaders. My sincere thanks go to Sarah Abrahamson, Greg Atkins, Ken Bingenheimer, Melissa Blunden, Nan Caldwell, Laura Davis, Angie Hodapp, Matt Minney, and Dee Ruger. My family loves and supports me through teaching, travel, preoccupation, and exhaustion. James, Julia, Brooks, and Shelley forgive my absences and indulge my passion for kids, schools, and books. Alex, to whom this book is dedicated, celebrates his 16th birthday as my 16th book goes to press. He plays the guitar and is more cool than is probably legal in the state of Massachusetts. At viii ACCOUNTABILITY FOR LEARNING that age I had a pocket protector with a leaking pen, black plastic glasses, and “cool” was a climatic term. He is also a generous and decent young man, a fabulous big brother, and a mensch of whom his family is very proud. Douglas Reeves Swampscott, Massachusetts Introduction Teachers and educational leaders are extraordinarily busy, inundated with demands for more work and better results with fewer resources—and less time. You will decide within the next few paragraphs whether this book is worth your time. Let me come straight to the point. Accountability for Learning equips teachers and leaders with the ability to transform educational accountability policies from destructive and demoralizing accounting drills into meaningful and constructive decision making in the classroom, school, and district. You do not need to wait for new changes in federal or state legislation. This book is about what you can do right now to improve learning, teaching, and leadership. Although I respect the role that senior leaders, board members, and policymakers play in education (see Chapter 6), the plain fact is that accountability for learning happens in the classroom. The traditional failures in educational accountability are not born of a lack of knowledge or will. We know what to do, yet decades of research and reform have failed to connect leadership 1

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