I think it may be possible to analyze the professional/work effectiveness of a class of individuals without ever having been a member of said class. You do this for a living with educators. How do you create internal validation of your conclusions without personal experience? I mean, you’re not counting the number of protons leaving the Sun over a standard time period as a measure of the solar wind; you are trying to measure accountability presumably, of teachers, not students, right? The higher the test score, the more accountable the teacher is. Is that it? Can anyone have your job?

“We make hypotheses because we are all trying to make judgments about policies and their effectiveness.” No, you are not making hypotheses, you are making judgments. A judgment and an hypothesis are two different things. A hypothesis normally precedes an experiment which tests variables presented in a hypothesis. Only after an experiment has been performed and conducted by others may an estimation of effectiveness be offered. Look Kress, and others in policy, go ahead and run experiments but avoid making judgments without empirical evidence. And here I must repeat, “Solid research takes us some distance. Reason and judgment carry us somewhat further.” NO! If the research is solid, there is NO need for your “reason” or “judgement”. Do you get it??

I simply want to know what accountability means. I am but a humble ABD, despite my advanced years and experience between higher ed and K-12. My most recent publication was in October, 2012. If you don’t troll the professional literature of K-12 instruction, I can understand why you missed me. Me, I tend to consider the considered thoughts of even the most lowly of unpublished kindergarten teachers worthy of respect.

From Hanushek and Raymond, “The cornerstone of current federal educational policy has been expansion of school
accountability based on measured student test performance.” But the test performance is situated within the assumptions the test designers make. There is no discussion of this important consideration. From page 25, “First, accountability as seen during the 1990s tended to help White achievement more than Black achievement.” Even if we assume the methodology and assumptions of what ‘accountability’ means as valid, the differential exposure to the variable of accountability begs a social interpretation. Need I explicate? Need I?

Listen pal, I get that we’re all trying to make sense of very complicated issues. I also get that some of us have political agendas and ideological fantasies. Capice? The only reason you bothered to respond to me or Marlowe is because we get under your skin–and while I can’t speak for Marlowe because I have no idea who s/he is, I will not sleep until those who mean to undermine the authority and professional experience of the classroom teacher are exposed. If you want to make changes to the system and you believe your econometrics are valid, you will have to make that fancy math accessible to rank and file teachers for interpretation and validation. Can you tell a kindergarten teacher or high school chemistry teacher with a BA, in simple English, how Hanushek and Raymond went about their research, their methodology, their mathematical analysis?

This is called teaching, Sandy. The job of the teacher is to break down and make accessible complex ideas to younger and less experienced students. That is YOUR job as well as mine. You can’t just tell people what to believe. I mean, hey, you Bushies did a good job of convincing people Saddam did have WMDs despite counterfactual evidence and now you pretend to tell ME how to perceive reality? Your NCLB/accountability data is rife with unproven assumptions and tortured statistical analyses. You know it. I know you know it.

So, I’m throwing it down. Translate Hanushek or whatever study you choose that purports to show a causal link between accountability before and after 2001 to higher student achievement on standardized tests (how you define accountability) into everyday speech that even kindergarten teachers or gym coaches or I will understand. One other thing: you DO understand don’t you, that the word accountability has both connotative and denotative dimensions? It’s not just some value-free econometric. It is loaded. Please consider that in your response.

“We make hypotheses because we are all trying to make judgments about policies and their effectiveness.” The trouble is that your hypotheses often end up as policy goals and initiatives without authorizing or waiting for research findings. “Solid research takes us some distance. Reason and judgment carry us somewhat further.” In the physical sciences, your assumption here would be completely invalidated. In the social sciences, you do indeed have room. Reason and judgment are by nature, subjective and thus open to discussion. But you see, education in this country is a contested terrain. It is political because our founders seem to have left education a matter of local concern rather than leaving it to professionals. I regard our founders blameless; they could not have understood how education is a matter best left to those with the expertise any more than the profession of medicine should be left to professionals.

Oh, snap.

Though we’ve hit each other pretty hard over the past couple of days, I actually think there’s been light from both sides – in addition to the heat.

I’d like to delve more into Maryland on another day.

To Miller – Hanushek and Raymond found in their research that there was a dramatic turn to consequential accountability between 1996 and 2000. Twelve states had such policies in 1996; 39 states did by 2000. This is the basis for my asserting that the year of 1999 in the Long Term data was a reasonable demarcation point for pre and post.

Listen, pal: each and very one of us is trying to make sense of very complicated issues. In all the abundant research I’ve read, I’ve never seen you mentioned once. So, cool your jets on credentials, skills, and experience.

@Sandy, “I’m not going to assert certain confidence in causality. No one can.” But you did, in attempting to remove confounding variables. What is your operational definition of this “accountability reached a tipping point as a boundary”? What sort of accountability, what defined the tipping point? I think that maybe your total and utter lack of experience in the classroom leads you to erroneous assumptions and invalid conclusions. Even Petrilli disagrees with you and supports Marlowe. And he, like you, seems to be someone who worships at the holy church of accountability as actually meaning anything. http://www.edexcellence.net/commentary/education-gadfly-daily/flypaper/2011/fact-checking-sandy-kress.html

“One thing’s for sure: opposition to accountability has risen significantly in the last few years.” No, it’s not for sure. Your statement is an assertion, an interpretation of the data. Nothing more, unless you can show otherwise. Maybe it’s not even ‘accountability’ that teachers oppose; maybe it’s the quality of the reform measures proposed by the elite that simply spells FAIL.

But hey, keep trying to make your dog hunt and I will offer, ‘Proceed, Mr. Kress.’ Reformers just keep digging that hole deeper.

Never said Dee’s study was without flaw. Never said it was evidence that high stakes accountability is the best policy out there. All I claimed was a DnD analysis in a top tier peer reviewed journal is a better starting point for debate than a couple of bozos doing addition and subtraction in the comment threads of a blog. Let’s get serious here intellectually shall we.

P.S. Do you have anything published in a scholarly journal with an impact factor score as high as JPAM?