May 19, 2006 — “Accountability Plus Standards Equals Success” appeared in the Poughkeepsie Journal.
FACT SHEETS, OP-EDS
Accountability Plus Standards Equals Success
I read this op-ed piece and the EducationWonk’s take on it and seems to me like EdWonk and SecSpell are both missing some components in their equation. Human Performance Technology (HPT) holds that there are six factors that lead to success. Secretary Spellings got two of them — standards and accountability — and EdWonk got part of a third — the involvement of the right people.
What is missing from this equation?
- Performance Specification
- This would be the Standards base that Sec. Spellings refers to, but it goes beyond merely spelling out the standard. A performance specificiation must be realistic. Standards set so high that they are obviously unachieveable become ignored. Standards set too low are meaningless.
- Feedback
- Is the feedback meaningful and timely? Before there can be consequences, there must be information about the performace. The high stakes testing provides the one feedback loop in NCLB. So does the media in reporting the variations from state to state which indicate that some states are gaming the Performance Standards. Who provides the feedback to individual parents and students?
- Consequences
- In order to be effective there must be some kind of consequence — good or bad — that accrues to the performers. Good performance should be rewarded and poor performance should be as well. These consequences need to be accrued by every individual in the chain of performance for it to be effective. NCLB has consequences for the schools, but schools are institutions and not individuals. The consequences outlined in NCLB have little direct effect on parents, students, or state level policy makers until the consequences become severe enough to close schools.
- Task interference
- Are there obstacles in the way of achieving the standards? One of the elements in success is in the identification and removal or minimization of those obstacles. In most organizations, a clear threat analysis is seldom done. Education is no exception. Impediments to success include state rules on Educational management, inadequate resources to achieve the standards, and a lack of clear understanding of the goals.
- Knowledge and Skill
- Do the people involved in the effort have the correct knowledge and skills? Clearly, the answer is, “no.” Policies are being set by a “management” (politicians) with little knowledge or skill in the processes which they oversee and control. This breakdown represents a critical flaw in the development of good educational outcomes.
- Individual capacity
- Are the right people engaged at the right levels? Unless the people involved have the ability to do the task, it won’t get done. Teachers have the ability to teach but not all students have the ability to learn. They may be disadvantaged economically, physically, or emotionally. The degree to which the institutions can be successful is directly corollated to the community support available to get the kid to school on time, fed, dressed, and focused on the task at hand.
Sec Spellings’ needs to check her math. While Standards and Accountability do, indeed, contribute to success, there’s a lot more that needs to happen before the desired outcomes can be achieved.