Will Standards and Accountability Enhance Educational Innovation?

Philip Smith

The Ohio State University

Summer 2010

Imagine that we lived in a nation of several hundred million people where there were huge variations of individual talents, attitudes, beliefs, and behavior. Imagine, too, that we professed to value these differences, not to merely tolerate them, but to actually encourage and celebrate them to a large and generous extent. Moreover, our reason for this stance was not simply because it showed a healthy respect for individuals, who might otherwise be constrained to their detriment, or who might become targets of unwarranted ridicule, exclusion, exploitation, or even persecution, but because we were convinced that encouraging and celebrating individual differences would also benefit us and our society as a whole. We figured there would be less waste of human resources, fewer unrepairable conflicts, and social pathologies. As far as we were concerned human differences strengthen and enrich our national culture in a similar way biological diversity engineers a dynamic robust ecology.

For most Americans, and those sympathetic with America’s self-image, grasping this idea is hardly a stretch. However much everyday life diverts from this ideal, it pretty much represents what the culture embraces and encourages. From its beginning the rallying cry has been E Pluribus Unum (“one out of many”). The founders of our Nation saw themselves working to create a “new race”, one that defined itself by its commitment to the values of a modern enlightened democracy, not by blood or tradition. They were convinced that diversity, along with the right kind of socialization, would produce a national culture that lived out its respect for all persons regardless of their origins. (Schlesinger, Jr., 1998, p.17) Our social nature as human beings requires that we live together not merely out of practical necessity, but to find personal fulfillment. Rather than imply a loss of personal freedom, however, our social relationships provide the grounds for our autonomy. When they fail in this regard, they must be rethought and reformed. Here is the point where education begins to show its mettle.

This sounds nice in theory. But how are things working out? What are risks and costs of living this way, (i.e., as if our social relationships were liberating as well as bonding, as paradoxical as that sounds)? What happens when our efforts fall short of our expectations, where our differences appear to divide us rather than bring us together? Smart people, like John Winthrop, William James, and John Dewey, were convinced we could do this in the United States. But how should we respond when the very thing that is supposed to be our strength begins to look more like a threat?

Constructive replies to this question are hard to find. Many people prefer simply to ignore it, insisting the problem is exaggerated or overblown. Others regard it as ill-conceived, or impossible to deal with, except competitively where there are clear winners and losers. The first attitude ignores reality. The second is a repudiation of the American sense of a new race. For anyone who believes that the American promise of a modern enlightened democracy is not a delusion, it is preposterous to suggest that success for some can only come at the expense of others. If our world is not exactly “one for all and all for one”, the life they seek still requires the melding of human variations within a meaningful framework of fraternity and solidarity.

Be this as it may, we cannot rely solely on the authority of our culture to direct us. First of all, we want to keep our culture as open-ended and flexible as possible. In addition, we want a culture we can control, rather than one that controls us. So, the idea of looking for precise guidance from on high, from the culture itself, is pretty much out of the question. Our only choice is to work out the details ourselves, “on the fly”, so to speak, without being told exactly what to do by some higher authority. We need to be good fabricators, good pragmatists who can figure things out as we go along. If we cannot know a priori what a modern democratic culture should look like, and cannot specify in advance what behavior is called for in public and private life, except in the most vague and general fashion, we have no choice but to trust our wits. Our fate is in our hands. Our official position is that there is no aspect of life, no field of endeavor--from law, to business, to politics, to religion, to education--where this is not true. On what grounds then should we operate?

However seriously we ask this question about ourselves, we usually ask it with greater urgency about others, perhaps for good reason. We want to know what others know, and know if they know what they are supposed to know. We expect them to be able to communicate with us, to talk things over and to work cooperatively with us when necessary. We get upset if we think other people cannot, or will not, do what we think they should. When this happens one option is to seek a legal remedy, to go to Civil Court, for instance, and sue the offending parties for damages, for “misfeasance” (incompetence) or “malfeasance” (bad intentions). Our legal system sets relatively clear standards for of holding people accountable. But notice, legal remedies are always “after-the-fact” actions. Even if justice is served, the damage has already been done. The promise of preventing problems from occurring in the first place is a huge factor in explaining our interest in education. But what should we do when we believe that education has failed to deliver on its promise?

To begin with, there are probably as many motives behind complaints about American education, as there are people who gripe about it. Should we really be surprised? We have deliberately dimmed the lights of our culture and given as much discretion as possible to individuals. Then we say to people, qua individuals or as members of functional groups, “OK, now take care of these problems.” And so they do, more or less, as best they can, or as well as they want, with whatever motives they possess, good or bad. Is it any wonder that things do not always turn out as well as we hope, or as we expect? It is a lot to ask of people; and it requires considerable faith in their abilities, talents, and good will.

The risks of operating this way can seem too great, the costs too high, to move ahead with this American experiment. Yet, what choice do we have? It is naïve to believe we could ever find a single source of meaning and value that we would agree upon, even if we tried, or thought we should. We are left to figure out how to live and work together without much help from a centralized authority. Clearly, this is easier said than done. It is especially obvious in professional fields, where certain individuals possess, or lay claim to, expertise that other must depend upon. The rest of us can only hope that those who assert this expertise will behave responsibly. But even the most casual observer would have to admit that “unprofessional” conduct is everywhere these days and that the problem is getting worse. In part this stems from uncertainty within the professions themselves as to what responsibility consists in. Now more than ever questions about one’s professional duty are answered with minimal assurance and even less consensus.

There are two ways to approach this problem. The first is to look at the context and figure out in sufficient detail how professionals should behave and what non-professionals can rightfully expect. Judgments are involved here on all fronts. In the end professionals are held responsible for the consequences of what happens on their watch. The second approach is modeled on the legal liability example cited above. It grows out of dissatisfaction with the discretion given to professionals to establish their own goals and standards; and it limits the extent to which their specialized knowledge can be used to privilege their judgments. It also looks for ways to drop the moralizing language of responsibility in favor of a more straightforward matter of fact vocabulary of the sort found in law and business. On this view, the moralizing language of responsibility was adopted out of a naive belief that it would prevent problems from happening in the first place, rather than merely redress them ex post facto. But in the modern secular world this approach will not work. Remedies for failure in law and business may come too late for many, but they look to be our best and only option. To the surprise of many they have proven to be remarkably effective.

This latter approach to achieving goals and objectives, and solving problems along the way, has come to be known as “accountability”. This raises a number of significant questions. Is it really different from the first approach that features responsibility? Does the vocabulary of accountability fundamentally change the nature of our concerns? What are the risks and costs of each approach, assuming they are different? Do we lose anything important when moral sensitivity disappears as a motive force behind professional conduct? Or would we gain more than we lose? Why have so many people, inside and outside of professional life, come to prefer accountability to responsibility as a mode of professional assessment?

Accountability in the arena of public education grew markedly in importance over the last 30 years as a way out of a long-term dilemma. As seen by one critic, it “…began in the 1980’s at the urging of leaders of business and industry and was quickly picked up by politicians and a large segment of the voting, tax-payer public. The reform message preached by Democrats, Republicans, and the mainstream media is simple: One: America’s schools are, at best, mediocre. Two: Teachers deserve most of the blame. Three: As a corrective, rigorous subject-matter standards and tests are essential. Four: Bringing market force to bear will pressure teachers to meet the standards or choose some other line of work. Competition—students against student, teacher against teacher, school against school, state against state, nation against nation—will yield the improvement necessary for the United States to finish in first place internationally.” (Brady, 2008) If some of those who support this type of reform have smaller ambitions, they nevertheless embrace this approach and accept its basic assumptions.

While most people would see “accountability” as synonymous with “responsibility”, as meaning more or less the same thing, or at least as not in conflict with it, the logic and attitudes of ordinary language show this not to be the case. (Craig, 1982, pp.133-140) Accountability implies having a duty or expectation to act in a manner that has been specified in advance. The idea embodies the logic of contracts, wherein nothing important is left to the discretion of those who carry them out. The terms and conditions are settled prior to their execution. By contrast, if one is ‘responsible’ it means that one is morally answerable as a cause of what occurs. It implies an agent who can initiate behavior and reflect on the “why” of the “what”, and the “what” of the “how”.

Accountability involves external sanctions and controls. With responsibility, sanctions and controls are internal. A person could behave mindlessly and still be accountable, so long as the presumed standards were met. Responsibility makes this impossible as a matter of logic. It is silly to say that a person is responsible for prespecified behavior, unless that individual has the authority to do otherwise. To be held responsible for behaving as directed, in any coherent sense of the term, one would need to qualify as an agent who consciously endorsed the intent of what was done. By contrast, a person who worked to implement prespecified behavior, or carry orders, could be held accountable, even without qualifying as an agent who acted approvingly.

As seen by its advocates, accountability filters out bias, avoids the fog of human perception, and renders judgment unnecessary. This is accomplished by limiting the focus of evaluation to what is quantifiable or countable. But precisely for this reason, it works better is some areas than others. There is an old saying in statistics: “to be is to be the value of a variable, that whatever exists, exists in some amount, and whatever exist in some amount can be quantified”. In some worlds this may be true; in others just as real it most decidedly is not, or it is true only in certain aspects. The point here is to ask about the motivation for this attitude. Why would anyone believe it? “Because it is true” is one possible response. “Because it is useful to assume” is another. Under given conditions either of responses could have considerable merit. But if we are asking about the motivation for this attitude, apart from its justification, there is something else we might say: “because it comforting to know things for sure”. How much merit does this response have?

Removing any doubt about what is purportedly known eliminates any responsibility for the consequence of believing it. After all, it is “the truth” and “the truth” speaks for itself. Telling other people what to do based on purportedly certain knowledge may not eliminate altogether our responsibility for imposing it on others in the form of expectations, but it surely lessens it. Similarly, when people are told exactly what is expected of them that, too, pretty much relieves them of any responsibility for what they do. The loss of authority that is associated with being held accountable is seen by many as an easy trade off. They regard it as a license to do only what is required, especially when doing more might actually get them into trouble. Responsibility always adds to our burdens, sometimes excessively so. Second-guessing ourselves can feel like a curse. But avoiding responsibility oftentimes comes at a cost. It lowers our expectations and moves us in the direction of being merely functional operators, who eventually will be replaced by other more functional units.

Accountability applied to education cannot avoid fossilizing the already formalized structures of schooling. Schooling picks out specific aspects of education and standardizes them for general inculcation. The full richness of educational experience is rarely, if ever, captured. This is not automatically a bad thing. But even this can be done badly. Mark Twain (n.a.) knew it and responded accordingly: “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education”.4 (Twain) His alter ego, Huckleberry Finn, expressed the same sentiment just prior to his big adventure down the Mississippi River: “I finished my schooling and commenced my education”. While schools can do certain things extremely well, and while they play a critical role in education for modern life, they cannot do everything; and they can easily make matters worse, as Huck’s case illustrates. Everyone would agree that schools should not be allowed to flounder. But it is easily forgotten in the hustle and bustle of everyday life that their primary mission in a society like ours is to cultivate independent-minded responsible democratic citizens. Other things matter, too, of course. But if they do not hook up with this prime directive, they will fail in their most important charge. If accountability makes it harder for the schools to succeed in their primary mission by downplaying the importance of responsibility, especially in regard to the teachers themselves, it will be worse than wasted effort. It will cause school experience to be more dreadful and demeaning than it is already.

Accountability makes more sense for some professions than others. Where the best practices of a profession are generalizable and not in dispute, accountability makes a lot of sense. But where professional decisions about what to do, how, when, where, and why, are not generalizable, or obvious, where they require agents who are well-prepared and trustable, who always keep in mind their highest professional aspirations, then, in that case, accountability is likely be an impediment to good practice. Soldiers, surgeons, factory mangers, accountants, engineers, policeman, and professional athletes are examples of professionals who probably could be assessed largely on accountability standards; politician, lawyers, family physicians, and scientists, perhaps less so; preachers, counselors, and therapists, maybe less yet. What about teachers? Where do they fit? To what extent would they be helped or hindered by working under the specter of prespecified expectations? Granted that teachers, like all professionals, need a certain level of freedom, the question is, how much? This is where the rubber hits the road as far as accountability is concerned.

A system of external sanctions and controls is never limited to the specification of outcomes. One way or another, it prescribes the procedures to be used for securing these results. It is interesting to note that modern life has elevated procedure to a place once held by morality. The reason is not hard to find. The modern mind views morality with suspicion. Concerned as it is with personal freedom, dignity and practical results, it perceives morality as having done considerable harm in the world when imposed unintelligently without mercy. Determined to do better, modern people like to separate the content of morality from its mode of implementation. If moral content does not calibrate with the methods used for putting it into practice, it is reformulated to fit those methods, rather than the other way around. This would be nothing to complain about if the influence went both ways. But the process is not transactional. Moral content becomes something different without consideration of its integrity, or else it disappears altogether, as utility trumphs substance and thought.

In the final analysis the appeal of accountability has little to do with faith in human potential. It comes more from the promise to control the educational process from top to bottom. There is a widespread belief among Americans today that their schools need to be better managed. They feel these institutions have fallen below acceptable performance levels. This applies especially to the Public’s schools. There is a lot at stake, nothing less that our future as an experiment in democratic living. We have little time to waste. Improvements have to be qualitative as well as quantitative. But lest we forget, there is a reason why responsibility has played such a prominent role in education for so long in our educational institutions. It treats individuals as ends-in-themselves, as persons, never solely as means. It assumes they have a disposition to think, and when this inclination is properly developed it becomes both a cause and effect of our success. No one should be mislead about accountability in this regard. Thinking well is not its top priority. The British philosopher, Bertrand Russell (n.d.) reminded us why it should be: “Most people would sooner die than think. In fact they do so.”5 (Russell)

The appeal of responsibility in education, such as it is, remains the same as always. It promises to help us think and act better than we would otherwise. This benefits everyone and our society as a whole. If our educational institutions are not paying enough attention these days to the cultivation and exercise of good thinking, or if we fear that our schools might actually be hindering its development, the remedy is not to adopt a reform technology that skirts any need for deliberation, judgment and choice. If, for any reason, we believe it is important to hold professional educators more accountable than we do already, we need to recognize the cost. People will do what they are told, or they will not. Accountability assumes there are no other options. Responsibility challenges us to see the world in a more rich and nuanced way, to envision other possibilities, better and worse, that require insight and reflection to appreciate.

Do computers think? Most philosophers today would say, no. Their reason is that computers are not conscious, and without consciousness thinking is impossible. This presumes, of course, the kind of thinking that human being engage in. But this is what gives the question its force. Processing huge amounts of data with lightning speed is not thinking of the relevant kind. Imagine a person, alone in a room, who has been given a stack of cards, on which are printed single Chinese characters. Imagine, too, that the person has been given a sheet of instructions about how to arranged these cards, some to the left, others to the right, of a mid-line, with each card having a prescribed position. When the cards have been arranged as instructed that person will still have no idea what they mean without understanding Chinese.6 (Searle, 2002, pp.51-69)

A computer is like that person, performing flawlessly as instructed, but without getting the gist of anything. How could it, not being conscious? No matter how much the computer’s performance improves, how good it gets at playing chess, for example, it will never be enlightened. It does not reflect on anything. It has no feelings or emotions of any kind. It never gets depressed or angry. It cannot experience euphoria or amazement. All it does is function, albeit impressively, like the machine that it is. It could never be a good citizen or a fabulous lover. It makes no sense to hold it responsible for anything--or accountable, for that matter. Accountability pushes people in the direction of a computer. It treats them too much like mindless automata. It retards their development as thoughtful human beings. For that, someone will be responsible.

References

Brady, M. (2009). Educational reform: An ignored problem, and a proposal. (Email

received Aug. 25, 2009: mbrady22@cfl.rr.com), web address: http://www.marionbrady.com/2008/10/investigating-systems-course-of-study.html

Craig, R. P. (1982). Some fundamental differences. In Smith, M.C. & Williams, J. (Eds),

Proceedings of the Annual Conference of the Midwest Philosophy of Education Society (pp.133-140).

Russell, B. (n.d.). BrainyQuote.com. Retrieved August 17, 2010, from

BrainyQuote.com Website: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/b/bertrandru103632.html

Schlesinger, A. M. Jr. (1998). The disuniting of America: Reflections on a

multicultural society (revised and enlarged edition). New York, NY: W. W. Norton.

Searle, J. (2002). Twenty-one years in the Chinese room. In Preston, J. & Bishop, M.

(Eds), Views into the Chinese Room: New essays on Searle and artificial intelligence (pp.51-69).

Twain, M. (n.a.). BrainyQuote.com. Retrieved Auigust 17, 2010, from

BrainyQuote.com Website: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/marktwain137887.html