By Larry Grau, Indiana State DFER Director
If you’re anything like me, a sunny day means throwing open the shades and letting the light shine in. Get up, get started and tackle the day. If you have a teenager or college student living at home, however, opening the blinds in the darkened confines of their room might give a whole new meaning to “letting the sun shine in.” Sometimes, the things you can’t see in the dark aren’t things you want to see in the light.
Sounds a little bit like what we’re experiencing in education these days.
Just like those darkened rooms where light might expose more than we knew existed or were pretending wasn’t there, we’re likely to see things in our education systems that many people, especially those who are most vocal in their opposition to education reform policies either; a) knew were there all along but didn’t want to acknowledge; or, b) have been oblivious to all along.
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When the heat gets too hot and the rhetoric too distorted, the political temptation will be to dial down the reforms. And then we’re back at square one.
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After working on various elements of K-12 accountability policies and systems since the topic became widely discussed in education policy in the 1990’s, it has become increasingly apparent to me that the reality of what accountability truly means–tracking, measuring, and utilizing results–is a scary proposition for some. The results generated through accountability systems can provide more information than what some people want to know; results can be used to implement change. And change for some people can be overwhelming, especially in a field where concrete, objective measures of performance are not always the norm.
In recent years the issue of accountability has remained a major focus of the debate surrounding education reform in the U.S., which has shed light on our educational system as a whole. The blinds have been lifted and the glare could result in more backlash than ever before. While accountability and performance measures are nothing new to most professional fields, these concepts are foreign to some in the world of education.