Business is Business...Education is Not

One of the biggest issues in education these days is the demand for teacher accountability. Largely because of our incessant need to use other countries' educational systems as our own measuring stick (even when the comparison is apples to oranges at best), we demand that teachers be held accountable for producing quantifiable results which we derive mainly from yearly high-stakes standardized tests.

Am I against accountability? Let me assure you, that is not the case. I certainly believe that teachers need to be held to high standards. Principals need to know their teachers well, examine their methods, evaluate the learning environment they create, and work to maximize the potential of each and every teacher under his or her charge. Teachers should be expected to push for excellence, motivate students, and to master/employ the most effective, proven methodologies in their practice. If a teacher doesn't expect these things of himself, he most certainly needs to be held accountable.

What I am against is accountability based solely on a business model. In the business world, the equation is generally simple: those who produce clear-cut, easily quantified and digested results will have jobs and opportunity for advancement, while those who do not produce results will be fired and replaced with new (and hopefully more successful) employees. It works in the business world, right? If a salesman can't sell, you get a new salesman. If a waiter drives customers away, you get a new waiter.

But, if you really want to apply such a business mindset to the world of education, you can't think of teachers as people with no employees under them; you have to think of teachers as managers. A manager is responsible for making sure the team underneath them is producing results. A manager has to organize the team, lead the team, put everyone in a position to produce desired results...and make the tough decisions to part ways with employees not producing.

And this is where the business model really breaks down. In the business world, a manager is generally judged on the results produced by those under their leadership. If a baseball team is winning, the general manager is a genius; if they are losing, he will need to be looking for a new place of employment. However, teachers cannot---AND THE VAST MAJORITY WOULD NOT EVEN IF THEY COULD---"fire" those on whose results he or she will be judged.

I as a teacher, do not have the freedom to cut little Johnny loose if he just isn't going to make me look good on the one-off, 40-question multiple-choice test the state claims is the ultimate, definitive measure of my efficacy as an English Language educator (this high-stakes test, by the way, contains no writing element because the state can't afford to pay people to grade it).

And would I send Johnny packing even if I could? OF COURSE NOT!!! A teacher's job is different than a business manager's job because teachers know they must prepare and educate kids when they are compliant and when they are defiant, when they sit politely and absorb information as well as when they are spewing profanity and intentionally derailing every attempt the teacher makes to do his or her job. A teacher accepts the fact that their job is to educate every kid, regardless of whether they have perfect attendance or barely show up 2/3 of the time because their parents kicked them out and now they're bouncing between relatives, friends' homes, or even the streets. A teacher knows that their job is to maximize every kid's potential whether they are a sophomore who is already prepared for college work or a senior reading on a fifth-grade level. And why are teachers like me happy to take on this charge? We do it because we know that our investment in kids' lives is too important and too complex to be monetized, digitized, or easily translated into spreadsheet data the feds can use to see how we stack up against Singapore.

Yet, in the business-model thinking that so many, especially in government positions, are pushing, a teacher's job security should primarily be based on whether or not a teacher can effectively "teach to the yearly test," a practice that robs students of an education that is rich, broad, intellectual, social, philosophical, and personalized in favor of a pre-fab, one-size-fits-all education employed not as a true investment in students, but as a desperate attempt to dominate a high-stakes test and thereby keep one's job.

As I said, I truly have no issue with teacher accountability. If you know me, you'll trust me when I say that if I begin to slide, become stagnant, develop attitudes or habits in my profession that are unhealthy, or simply am not teaching to the expectations of my principal, superintendent, or my community, I hope that someone will call me on it. Should that ever happen, I hope that I'll be given (and will have earned) the opportunity to address my shortcomings and improve. If, after having that opportunity, my leadership does not feel I can get the job done, I need to be let go.

However, like those teachers who made the difficult choice to strike in Chicago, I hope that my employment will not solely be based on a once-a-year test that is, at best, an inadequate measure of student capability...as if the data it yielded could tell you the story of:

• The young man I counseled through parental neglect.
• The young girls who've had to come and tell me that as sophomores, they've become expectant mothers.
• The kids I've fought to reach despite the fact they showed up to school high or with a severe hangover.
• The kids I've pleaded with to stick with it, stay in school, and be one of the few, if not the only, graduates in his or her family.
• The kids I mourned with when their classmate overdosed at a weekend party.

These kids (and others I don't have time to mention) may not have been in a position to produce the desired stellar test results that would afford me a business-model pat on the back, but I would never have "fired" a one of them even if I could have. Quite the contrary, I fought for each and every one of them as if they were my own, satisfied in the fact that I am a teacher, not corporate middle-management; I'm more than a simple test-derived number used to compare, rank, sort, retain and fire.

I'm an instructor. I'm a friend. I'm a confidant. I'm a coach. I'm a motivator. I'm a discipliner. I'm a counselor. I'm an example. I'm a provider. I'm a father-figure. I'm a teacher.

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