From Compliance to Competence: A New Paradigm for Educational Accountability

"Simply following the rules should not absolve the system of its accountability for properly and fully educating students, and currently that is what we have: an upside-down reality of compliance to rules rather than performance outcomes for students."

Picture yourself at the doctor’s office. You show up, all forms are filled out perfectly, entered into the computer smoothly. There are no snags with co-pay or insurance. So far, so good. But then, the doctor comes in, doesn’t look you in the eye, doesn’t ask how you are feeling or what is wrong or even why you came in, and sends you home with a one-size-fits all prescription based on your age-range. You go home, take the medication as prescribed, and a month later, you’re still not feeling well. Will you go back to this same doctor?

If the above sounds ridiculous, well that’s because it is. Given an option, no one would tolerate this. To use another example, accountability in government standards would have you hire a cement contractor because he was the best at doing his taxes, therefore ensuring his licensure, rather than the best at pouring a foundation. Sadly, however, it is how government and, in particular, how the educational system defines accountability. The entire edifice revolves around professional paperwork standards, not scholastic achievement. In Montana, our children are the foundation for our future, thus we must redefine accountability in our educational system so that it focuses on the outputs, the measurable learning results, and not the compliance-based inputs of the current system.

Despite numerous prescriptive standards, the desired results aren’t currently achieved. Take reading and math standards for example. Rule 10.53.407 details that a 3rd grade student shall: know and apply grade-level phonics and word analysis skills in decoding words [and] to read with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension. And yet, yearly results reveal that less than half the students in the state read at a minimally proficient level by the end of 3rd grade, and only 17% can do so at an advanced level, as the standard prescribes. Same goes for math, only the results for students are even worse. Simply printing in rules that eighth grade students must “know and apply the properties of integer exponents to generate equivalent numerical expressions,” does not help teachers ensure their chosen curriculum or instructional methods lead to this result. And, the state continues to fund their efforts year after year regardless of not meeting the standards.

Regarding reading, if the goal is for students to read accurately, fluently and with comprehension by the end of third grade, then standards should ensure access to explicit, systematic, phonics-based instruction taught by phonics-trained teachers until each student has learned to decode fluently and with accuracy. This would still allow for local control so long as each school chose a phonics-based curriculum and exclusively hired phonics-trained teachers. And, this standard would simultaneously compel the state’s universities to train elementary level teacher candidates in phonics-based instructional methods, a practice that is not widely occurring in Montana. Or, is there a way to eliminate the bulk of the standards and only fund schools that regularly meet merit-based performance measures regardless of how they do it?

None of this is to imply that rule-based compliance has no place in our educational system. Of course it does, all games have rules by which they are played. But simply following the rules should not absolve the system of its accountability for properly and fully educating students, and currently that is what we have: an upside-down reality of compliance to rules rather than performance outcomes for students. Our students need and deserve more, and as taxpayers and citizens, we must demand it on their behalf, and on behalf of our collective future.