The Cancer of Teacher Accountability
In 2023, as in every other year, a lot of the discussion about education in Idaho will inevitably turn to teacher accountability as an effective way to improve education throughout our state and likely we’ll see more laws passed that emphasize increased teacher accountability, because we do every year. This is because many of our policy-makers and even some of our educators buy into a notion that appeared in our country around the turn of the century that teachers are pretty much the sole determinant of what ultimately happens inside a classroom; if you can get good enough teachers (which you do by holding teachers accountable through teacher evaluation and student test scores) in your classrooms, magic will happen and all academic scores will go up. Because I’m a history guy, a while back I wrote about the origin of this notion, which I call the ‘ Super Teacher Idea ’ because I believe this idea has been a cancer to schools across the nation for 20 years now. The real question here t
