By John R. Butcher
by cranky
But Not for Me!
The proposed 2016 Annual Report of the Board of Education uses the word “accountability” twenty-two times.
Two of those are in reproduced statutes; the other twenty are in the draft report.
The report has the Board modifying its view of accountability (at p.6, repeated at p.14):
This talk of “interventions aligned to need” and “encourage[ment]” of improvement is all about inputs, not effectiveness. Even the “indicators of school quality” are meaningless if nobody is accountable for the improvement, or lack of improvement, of the quality of education.
As well, the draft report is silent as to the Board’s authority to compel compliance with the Standards of Quality. Indeed, the Board has never exercised that authority.
As with the two instances quoted above, none of the twenty-two instances speaks of “accountability” of the Board for the effectiveness of its $105 million budget (not counting the $7.46 billion for direct aid to public education).
All this silence is understandable in light of the Board’s record of failure: This Board has been exercising its “accountability” regime in Petersburg since at least 2004, with the result that four of the six Petersburg school remain unaccredited. As a paradigm of the Board’s ineptitude in this respect, here is the history of Petersburg’s Peabody Middle School:
Indeed, this is the Board whose members admit (Sept. 21, 2016 video starting at 1:48) that they don’t know how to fix bad schools.
But, by golly, they do know how to talk and talk and talk about “accountability.”
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