If there is a single idea, which is most under consideration in educational circles today, it is the idea of accountability. But, unfortunately, there are almost as many definitions of educational accountability as there are supporters of the idea. To some militant local groups it means the grant to them of total power to fire and hire professionals on whatever subjective basis suits their purpose. To those concerned with rising education costs, this term means an accounting for money spent how much learning output for each dollar of input.
It was in the context of conflicting definitions that the United Federation of Teachers and the Board of Education, in September, 1969, entered into their historic agreement: "The Board of Education and the Union recognize that the major problem of our school system is the failure to educate all of our students and the massive academic retardation which exists, especially among minority group students. The Board and the Union therefore agree to join in an effort, in cooperation with universities, community school boards, and parent organizations, to seek solutions to this major problem and to develop objective criteria of professional accountability.
Last June, representatives of all these groups, after studying more than a dozen different approaches, reached unanimous agreement on procedure. First, there must be acceptance of a limited number of measurable (but not necessarily narrow) educational goals, for if the schools are made responsible for everything, they can be held accountable for nothing. Second, research must be conducted to determine what materials, programs, and professional practices are effective in achieving these goals. Third, the data emerging from the research would serve as criteria for the selection, training and retraining of teachers; for structural organizational changes in less successful schools and districts; and for the adoption of new materials and programs.
This research, it was hoped, would in time definitively answer questions, which are now subject to debate: Does the "open classroom" result in greater reading achievement than traditional approaches? Is there greater achievement when teachers prepare lesson plans? Do minority group children learn more when minority group teachers teach them? Such research is urgently needed since, unlike fields such as medicine and law, there is no general agreement on what constitutes competent practice in education. The effort, common in other fields, to provide empirical answers to empirical questions is a new departure in education, a field in which, only a few years ago, Dr. James Coleman was denied access to 13 of our nation's 15 largest cities while working on the now famous Coleman Report.
The Board of Education has so far refused to spend the $100,000 needed to get the project under way. This refusal is both foolhardy and dangerous. It invites the anger of all the groups, which developed the program at the Board's request. (All who are concerned with educational accountability should write and phone the Board of Education urging the immediate implementation of this agreement.)
It is foolhardy to continue spending $2 billion a year on our schools without knowing what works and what doesn't. It is dangerous to prolong the present state of educational ignorance in which questions, which should be resolved rationally and scientifically, are resolved by politics and confrontation. But the board appears to be motivated by something more than the desire to save $100,000. It apparently has been intimidated by the pronouncements of the Council Against Poverty and by Dr. Kenneth B. Clark, who oppose the program for the reason that it proposes to measure not only the effect of school variables but also the extent which non-school factors such as family, mobility, socioeconomic status, etc. aid or limit the ability of children to learn.
Dr. Clark and the CAP are apparently so eager to make teachers and the schools the scapegoats that they are determined to obstruct the development of more scientific procedures in education -- our best hope for reducing the massive academic retardation which now exists -- and to deny what is obvious, that the school alone cannot overcome all the handicaps imposed on students by other institutions. While Dr. Clark is justified in opposing those educators who would shift all responsibility to "society" or "poverty," he goes much too far when he states, in an issue of The Center Magazine: "We have come up with absolutely no hard evidence that economic status is the determining factor in the ability of a child to learn and be taught.
(Robert Kennedy's immediate response to Dr. Clark. Was: "When you talk about economic status, it involves better housing - the fact that there are five children crowded into a bedroom, that the toilets don't work, that a child is freezing in the winter and sweltering in the summer, that rats are keeping him awake at night. It would seem to me that if a child didn't have housing conditions like that, he would be a better student.") At any rate, if Dr. Clark is so sure of his theses, he should welcome the research, which could prove his point. His opposition to scientific study is evidence of his reluctance to put his theories to the test.