In fairly recent history the leadership of the Webster County Board of Education has tossed about rather freely the supposedly new approach to forcing the responsibility for students’ learning and test-taking onto the students. As a former teacher, I must state up front that I agree that students need to assume a great deal of the responsibility for their learning and performance on academic achievement indexes.
However, I believe the boe has not only put the cart before the horse, but they have also forced the student and the academic equine into the arena while, at the same time, providing no access to the cart at all. The question in my mind is, if we are going to force the responsibility/accountability burden onto the primary stakeholder (the student), how much accountability does the boe have to provide that stakeholder with access to the tools, resources, skills, guidance, and choices necessary to accomplish the extremely difficult task?
The underlying premise that has not been articulated in the boe proclamation that the “students’ free ride is over” is the fact that in order to hold someone accountable for an outcome, that person must also have the right to participate in the preparatory elements of an accountability model. That means that, if the boe wants to shove the “accountability” for learning into their laps, they must also allow them the right to assume “ownership” of the resources, the decisions, the choices, the design, the model, the delivery system, and the assessment. In other words, if the students are to be held accountable for academic performance, the students should be the primary stakeholder responsible for making the choices of what they are taught, how, by whom, and how they are to be assessed.
An analogy for the question at hand might be that of a farmer whose products are to be sold at market at the end of growing season. Knowing that he will be judged by the buyer on market day, the farmer must make certain choices: what he will sell, where he will plant, who will help him plant, what machines he will use to plant, what chemicals he will use for fertilizer, weeds, and insects, whether or not he will choose to cultivate the crops, whom he will hire to help him with the crops, how/when/and with what he will harvest the crops. And finally the farmer will choose if and how he will store the crop or sell it immediately. The bottom line is that, because the farmer has to assume the responsibility for his crop, the farmer must also assume the right to ownership of the process for producing the products.
So, if we thrust the responsibility for producing academic scores on the achievement tests upon the students, we must also grant the students the right to ownership of the process for producing the scores. But that part of the equation has never even been discussed. At least I haven’t read or heard anything of the sort.
Let’s ask the students. Students, have you selected the type of instruction you will have?
Have you chosen the content you will be tested over? Have you selected the assistance you will receive or the resources that will be tapped to aid in your learning? Will you use “fertilizer” (remediation) or special cultivation? When were you asked to serve on a committee to design or choose your curriculum and assessment? Or were you charged with the responsibility of ownership without being provided the privileges of ownership?
Hmmmmmm . . . I think our accountability model has some missing elements. Now, Whose fault/accountability is that?
Dr. E Carolyn Tucker
No comments:
Post a Comment