Erich Martel
Accountability, Responsibility, and Failed Student Achievement
An outline of the full report
March 29, 2005

Directories
Schools

Organizations
DC Education Compact
Parents United
Proposition 100%

TO: Dr. Clifford Janey, Superintendent, DCPS FR: Erich Martel (ehmartel@starpower.net)
Members, DC Board of Education Dept. of Social Studies, Woodrow Wilson H.S.
Members, DC Education Compact Member, DC EC Standards Alignment Work Group
DCPS Teachers, Counselors and Staff
Parents and Concerned Community Members

March 29, 2005

OUTLINE:

ACCOUNTABILITY, RESPONSIBILITY AND FAILED STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT: WHO IS RESPONSIBLE? WHO IS ACCOUNTABLE? HOW CAN IT BE FIXED?

I. The Reason for This Addendum Report to the DCEC WG #3 Report
II. The Meaning of Accountability

A. The Responsibility-Accountability Relationship
B. How accountability collapses
C. All Policies and Practices are the Result of Conscious, Individual Decisions
D. Student Achievement: the Multiple Strands that Converge in the Classroom

1. “Teaching” is the product of several input-outcome strands or interlocking links of responsibility and accountability
2. “Learning” is also the product of several converging input-outcome strands
3. Levels of Achievement are the quantifiable outcomes of teaching and learning as measured by valid, reliable & objective, subject-specific assessments:
4. Significance: All Responsibility-Accountability Links Must be Fixed and Working for Optimal Achievement

III. The Foundations of Accountability: Accountability Rests Upon Presumptions of Human Responsibility and Legal Mandates

A. Inherent in the concept of accountability is the presumption that supervision is necessary, because some subordinates will perform poorly or not at all, unless supervised
B. In a public school system, the top-down corporate model of accountability lacks the independence and responsiveness of the market
C. Shortcomings of the “stakeholder” metaphor: ” When everyone is “held accountable,” no one is!
D. Accountability is Direct, “On-Site” and Person-To-Person.
E. Accountability of a school’s instructional staff and principal cannot depend primarily on the results of standardized tests
F. The broken links of top-down accountability
G. A School System Lost at Sea: Top-down accountability requires bottom-up access

IV. Abdication of Accountability by the DCPS Academic Leadership: Refusal to provide each classroom with clearly written, research-supported subject-area standards.

A. Failure to provide quality standards, curricula, textbooks and competent academic leaders

1. Failure to select a knowledgeable CAO & Subject Area Content Specialists
2. Failure to provide scientific reading instruction (phonics/decoding) in K-3
3. Failure to Replace Deficient Subject-Area Standards
4. Failure to require evidence that new academic policies are supported by competent and objective studies of their effectiveness - and periodic, independent evaluations.

a. “multiple intelligences”:
b. “discovery learning” or “inquiry learning”

5. Failure to require DCPS officials to provide independent documentation of the effectiveness of all major electronic investments, before, during and after, including instructional software, such as Voyager, Fast Forward, Lightspan, etc.
6. Failure to require that staff development be directly linked to content that teachers need - as determined by diagnostic assessments.

B. Refusal to respond to reports of mismanagement, corruption and double standards that undermine effective teaching & learning; this includes the failure to:

a. 1994 to 2004: Failure to Activate the Letter of Understanding and Transcript Modules in
b. The failure to complete provide the Letter of Understanding to parents and students every

2. 2001-2003: Supt. and Board of Education Advertise a Business Plan With Impossible to Achieve Goals, Contradicted in the Master Facilities Update.

a. Impossible to achieve goals
b. Contradicted on the DCPS website
c. What does this have to do with accountability?

3. Falsified SAT9 scores: 2002: Moten ES SAT9 spikes
4. 2001 Wilson H.S. - Principal approves the alteration of a student’s grade without consulting the teacher.
5. 2002 Wilson H.S.: Altered student academic records and certification for graduation despite missing graduation requirements

a. What the Wilson H.S. academic records revealed.
b. An academy director manufactures schedules and grades
c. Results of the internal investigations
d. Board of Education takes no action; the City Council holds an oversight hearing
e. The independent review by Gardiner Kamya & Associates (GKA)
f. In September 2002, Supt. Vance convened the “Student Records Management Review Task Force” to develop recommendation for records security.
g. Significance of these discoveries: What they represent.

i. Lack of “institutional integrity”
ii. Social Graduation: Covering up the failure of the schools to educate students
iii. The “iceberg” issue: The enormity of hidden tampering.

h. Significance of these findings for superintendent’s proposal to increase math and science graduation requirements

V. STUDENTS: RESPONSIBILITY and ACCOUNTABILITY

A. Failure to Hold Students Accountable for Behavior and for Learning
B. How Toleration of Poor Behavior Perpetuates Disadvantage
C. The KIPP Academy Model: Success Begins with Clear and Consistently Enforced Rules of Student Behavior
D. Why are so many DCPS schools poorly administered?
E. Skewed Staffing and Misuse of Staff - DCPS NEEDS TO POST SCHOOL STAFFING DATA

1. Proliferation of high school academies
2. Comparison to Montgomery County, MD

F. Student Responsibility and Accountability

1. What are the rules?
2. Students redefine the rules: Cell phones and walkmen/headsets
3. Improved student achievement requires schools that are focused on learning, not on students’ individuality: there is a difference!
4. Dress code: Learning attire vs. socializing attire
5. What college professors tell us about student attitudes

G. Good Intentions that Undermine Student Responsibility for Learning

1. The Message of Calculators and Computers: “You’re not responsible for learning.”
2. The Meaning of “interesting” and “fun”?

H. The Responsibility of Parents

1. What is the purpose of greater parental rights?
2. How a School Can Empower Parents to Support the School’s Educational Mission:
Parental Responsibility - the DC KIPP Academy
3. How parents undermine the school’s mission: cell phones

VI. FIXING ACCOUNTABILITY MEANS ENFORCING RESPONSIBILITY

A. What does an accountable school system look like?

1. It promotes a school culture defined by its mission: the transmission of knowledge.
2. An accountable school system is not a perfect school system, but one that quickly acknowledges problems and moves to correct them
3. In an accountable school system - at all levels - policy decisions are based on documented evidence of success, not anecdotes, “emerging understandings,” “promising practices,” etc.
4. Teacher and Parent Access to Superintendent, Assistant Superintendents, Board
5. In an accountable school system, in loco parentis means adults are in charge.

B. Specific Recommendations To Establish Accountability: TRANSPARENCY

1. Transparency of Student Academic Records Within the Limits of Confidentiality
Recommendation - Give Teachers Oversight Authority Over Student Academic Records - Establish Teacher Oversight Committees in All Schools that Award Graduation Credits
2. Mandatory annual audit and posting of all school bank accounts
3. Mandatory posting in every school the DC Whistleblower Reinforcement Act of 1998
4. Posting to the DCPS website of all contracts, their details and the adjustments,
5. Posting to the DCPS website of the “Independent Accountants’ Report on Applying
6. Compile and post on the DCPS website and in a binder available in each school.

VII. Avoiding The False Friends of Accountability

A. Ambiguous Language
B. Formulaic Accountability and Reform Models: Caveat Emptor
C. Consensus: Serving the School’s Mission or Group Comfort?

VIII. ADDENDUM A: Statutory Protection of the Integrity of School Records

A. Grades Final
B. Tampering (altering) a public record
C. Enters False Information or Misrepresents the Factual Contents of an Official Document

IX.ADDENDUM B. WILSON H.S. STUDENTS WHO GRADUATED IN JUNE 2001 AND THOSE SCHEDULED TO GRADUATE IN JUNE 2002 WITHOUT HAVING MET ALL REQUIREMENTS MANDATED BY THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA BOARD OF EDUCATION.

Erich Martel Accountability, Responsibility, and Failed Student Achievement An outline of the full report March 29, 2005

ACCOUNTABILITY, RESPONSIBILITY AND FAILED STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT: WHO IS RESPONSIBLE? WHO IS ACCOUNTABLE? HOW CAN IT BE FIXED?

Erich Martel
Accountability, Responsibility, and Failed Student Achievement
An outline of the full report
March 29, 2005