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[Remarks of Hayes Mizell on March 30, 2000 at a retreat of 30 central office staff, principals, teachers, and teacher union representatives from the Corpus Christi (TX) Independent School District. The retreat was held at the Port Royal Hotel in Port Aransas, TX. The purpose of the retreat was for the educators to examine the concept of "self-accountability" as it might apply to three middle schools and the school system. Mizell is Director of the Program for Student Achievement at the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation.]


What If There
Were No TAAS?

Several months ago, I was at a meeting where there was a lively dialogue between the superintendent of a small Texas school system and a nationally prominent education researcher. The researcher was critical of the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) because in his view it is driving teachers to focus students on relatively unchallenging knowledge and skill development. The superintendent, on the other hand, was from a school system that has made remarkable progress in closing the gap between the TAAS scores of Anglo, Hispanic, and African-American students.

The superintendent conceded that the influence of TAAS is not all positive, but said that the test, in combination with the state's accountability system, has caused school systems to become more concerned about improving the academic performance of all students in all achievement quartiles. He argued that TAAS will be revised and will become more challenging, but that in any case it has shaken school systems out of their complacent acceptance of poor academic performance by students from low-income, Hispanic, and African-American families.

This superintendent was being very honest. He could afford to be. The longitudinal TAAS data for his school system documents that the achievement of students whose demographics usually correlate with poor academic performance is now comparable with students who traditionally score at higher levels.

To his credit, the superintendent was admitting that before TAAS his school system was not paying much attention to how well it educated low-performing students. He was also saying that his school system has recognized the error of its ways, and it is now expecting the same high levels of performance from all students, and doing all it can to help every student meet those expectations. Its success in doing so is manifest in the similar TAAS scores of all demographic groups.

Of course, there is a worrisome aspect of the superintendent's admission. He implied that it is because of the Texas accountability and assessment system that schools in his community are doing what they should have been doing all along, taking whatever actions are necessary to improve significantly the academic performance of low-achieving students.

This caused me to think, "What if there were no TAAS?" What if the influence and pressure of the Texas accountability and assessment system suddenly vanished? Would this school system, and all others that have been prompted to devote more attention and effort to the education of low-performing students, simply revert to their former postures of benign neglect? If such back-sliding would be a real danger, what does it say about the professionalism of the school system's administrators and teachers? To whom do these educators feel they are most accountable: (a) the State of Texas or (b) themselves as professionals and the students they see every day?

What if there were no TAAS? What if the influence and pressure
of the Texas accountability and assessment system suddenly vanished?
Would school systems simply revert
to their former postures of benign neglect?

These are questions that I think all administrators and teachers who work in an environment of high-stakes testing should ponder. If we can agree that educating nearly all students to achieve at comparably high levels is important, and if we can agree that not all school systems, schools, and educators are, in fact, taking whatever actions are necessary to achieve that result, then is it only external pressures that will cause them to do so?

Obviously, many people believe that is the case. Over time, state legislatures have created accountability and assessment systems because it is their experience that school systems have been too tolerant of low levels of performance among both educators and students. These policymakers have seen little evidence that school systems, schools, and educators are changing to achieve higher levels of performance among both adults and young people.

One result is the accountability and assessment systems that now concern many people, but it is only one of the external pressures for accountability that public schools are currently experiencing. As you know, one of the strong arguments for vouchers, charter schools, and private scholarship programs is that they will shake public school educators awake and cause them to make changes necessary to educate all students more effectively, but particularly those who have no other education options.

Whether external state interventions will have their desired effects remains to be seen, but the fact that they are ubiquitous and increasingly an accepted part of the education landscape is no reason for educators not to struggle with the issue of accountability. Indeed, there is no hope that high-stakes testing and punitive state sanctions will ever recede if over time they prove to be powerful forces for causing educators to raise levels of student performance.

Schools will only be free of these external pressures when there is compelling evidence that the interventions are no longer necessary, or are ineffective, or are no longer politically viable. The state accountability system will become irrelevant only when school board members, administrators and teachers measure their success not by the state telling them their schools are "exemplary," "recognized," "acceptable," or "low-performing," but by holding themselves accountable for proving that their students consistently demonstrate high levels of proficiency.

Whether this day will ever come is very much in doubt. We have reached a sad state of affairs when educators do the right thing not because they understand and act on what they know must be done for their students to perform at higher levels, but because the state establishes and enforces thresholds of satisfactory performance. Curiously, nearly all of these educators are also parents. Few of them would ever say they are raising their own children only to do the right thing when they are being watched and judged by someone in authority. Most would say they want their children to develop internal standards of ethics and morality so will they do the right thing even if no adult is around. These educators would say they want their own children to do their best and rise to the challenges of life not because the young people should be afraid of what will happen to them if they do not, but because they have high expectations for themselves.

Yet, when it comes to their professional lives, many of these educators settle for less than second best. Most of them are good people. They work hard. They are honest and trustworthy. They get along with their colleagues. They try to do what their supervisors and colleagues expect of them. But they are not self-critical. They seldom face up to the gaps in their knowledge of the subjects they teach or the deficiencies of their pedagogy, both of which have a direct impact on the learning of their students. They too often wait for someone else to set the expectations and standards for their practice and its results. They resist judging their performance by the performance of their students.

These educators wait for their students and their school to be held accountable annually by the state, rather than holding themselves accountable throughout the year for knowing and improving the performance of both their students and their school. They work hard and hope for better results, but they shrink from the focus and discipline required to assess and strengthen the linkage between their practice and how their students perform.

I know that the culture of external accountability and assessment, as well as local educators' longstanding personal and professional relationships, makes it very difficult to even begin to shift the locus of accountability. But what if there were no TAAS? What levels of student and school performance would educators expect of themselves? How would they know, how would they really know with greater certainty and depth of understanding than TAAS can determine, the authentic performance levels of their students and schools? How would they forcefully document and clearly communicate to other audiences, including the state, what their students authentically know and can do? And how would they hold themselves and their schools accountable for making the professional and institutional changes necessary to cause nearly all students, particularly those who are far behind, to perform at the mastery level?

These are difficult questions, but if educators are serious about being professionals, if they want to take control of their own destiny and that of their schools, and if they see themselves not as victims but as potentially powerful agents for change, then these are the types of questions they will have to engage.


The process of self-accountability

There is no roadmap for you to follow if you want to begin the process of self-accountability. That is part of the challenge. There are, however, almost certainly some essential elements of holding yourselves and your schools accountable:

The first of these is acceptance of responsibility. If a school is going to hold itself more accountable for student performance, it has to accept the responsibility for doing so. It proclaims its role in the equation of factors critical for student achievement. The school recognizes that while there are personal, home, and community factors that affect whether a student performs at the mastery level, the school expects more of itself than it does of any other entity. Student performance is not an accident or aberration, it is a consequence of the school's actions and teachers' instruction. In the self-accountable school, administrators and teachers know this and embrace it; they do not make excuses. The school establishes high levels of performance for its administrators and teachers, putting the academic needs of students above the personal convenience and prerogatives of the school's adults, and it takes responsibility for school staff who do not meet the school's performance standards.

The second element is shared responsibility. Self-accountability is not something a principal can impose on a faculty. It is not something a faculty can achieve without the principal. There has to be consensus among a school's administrators and the school's teachers that they want to work together to demonstrate that they will expect more of their students' performance than does the state, that they will know more about their students' performance levels than does the state, and that they will more convincingly confirm what their students know and can do than does the state. There also has to be shared distribution of work and answering for results, or the lack of them.

The third element is initiative and inquiry. There is no point in a school seeking to hold itself more accountable if it does not intend to be more aggressive about taking initiative to determine which of its operations, structures, and practices it must change to cause students to perform at higher levels. The school does not assume it has nothing to learn. To the contrary, it assumes that someone, somewhere is addressing a problem or issue much more effectively than is a school in this system.

For example, there are almost certainly some high performing middle schools in Texas that have demographics similar to your schools but which are obtaining better results in student performance. Have you visited and learned from them? There is also an abundance of test data from a variety of sources that document how your students are performing. Have your site councils and faculties taken the initiative to analyze this data to isolate weaknesses in students' learning and teachers' instruction? Have you then implemented specific interventions to address both the students' and the teachers' problems, and monitored their subsequent performance to determine the results? Also, over a period of years the Education Matters' qualitative evaluation reports for this school system have cited low levels of instruction as a problem. Are schools prepared to take initiative to address this issue forcefully? This would be a critical component of self-accountability.

The fourth element is assessment. For schools to hold themselves truly accountable they will have to use means other than the state test to assess whether students are progressing towards meeting the school's high standards. The goal is not to invent a new test; it is to understand more about students' authentic performance than one can learn from the state test results. What do students really know and what can they do? How well can they apply what they have learned to new and challenging problems, presented in different contexts? The most obvious means of assessment is the collaboration among teachers to frequently and systematically analyze student work.

If you are interested in authentic student performance at higher levels, there is no surer way of getting there than the routine use of clear rubrics tightly linked to standards, teachers' use of anchor papers to illustrate each level of a rubric and guide their grading, and incredibly focused and intensive efforts to improve teachers' assignments and student work. There are also publicly available test items from old TAAS tests and it may even be appropriate for a school to identify, purchase, score, and analyze some other assessment more specifically targeted on a nagging problem such as reading.

The fifth component is full disclosure. To be more accountable, schools must be forthcoming and open about the performance of their students. Schools could have Internet sites that clearly describe and interpret all their most recent TAAS and other student performance data. But in a school system like Corpus Christi where many families do not have computers or Internet access, schools will have to develop other means to document and explain students' authentic performance. Are schools prepared to cover their walls with student work clearly linked to standards and rubrics, and to update these displays throughout the school year? Will the posted student work show the evolution of student writing from one draft to another draft to still more drafts to the final draft that represents high quality performance? Are schools prepared to use their newsletters to share information, in ways that make sense to families, about students' authentic performance?

Just as one purpose of standards is to "take the mystery out of learning," so is one purpose of self-accountability to make information about student performance transparent and pervasive throughout the school community. There are few schools that do this, because most schools treat student performance data as if it were a ticking bomb rather than a means to better understand the learning needs of both students and teachers, and improve their performance.

The sixth element is professional development. There is no question that it is scary for schools to hold themselves accountable. When they do so, they not only boldly claim their responsibility for student performance, but they commit themselves to taking whatever steps are necessary to cause their students to perform at much higher levels. One such step is to make sure that teachers are confident in their knowledge of the subjects they teach and have the skills to weave together curriculum and pedagogy so students want to learn and can learn what they need to perform to the mastery level. Some teachers have the knowledge but not the instructional skills. Others relate well to their students but have only a barely adequate grasp of their subjects. Still others strike out on both counts.

In any of these cases, however, it is difficult for the teachers to step forward and admit that they do not have all the answers and need help. Most school cultures do not expect, encourage or support teachers to identify their learning needs, nor do they take the initiative to ensure that these teachers participate in and benefit from appropriate staff development. There is no better investment a school or school system can make than to increase the capacity of its teachers to meet the instructional challenges they face each day. Yet, in most schools staff development is a sometime thing, often inappropriate to the specific learning needs of specific teachers, and lacking the intensity and follow-up necessary for it to produce significant changes in student performance.

Any school that wants to hold itself accountable for student performance has to spend time analyzing and understanding what its teachers and administrators need to learn in order for them to help their students learn. Then it has to provide the context and support that causes these educators to develop, practice, refine, and apply the knowledge and skills they need to increase student performance.

It is doubtful schools will take the risks to hold themselves more accountable if the school board, the superintendent, and the central office send explicit and implicit signals that what matters most is student performance on the state test.

The seventh element of self-accountability is central office support. It is doubtful schools will take the risks to hold themselves more accountable if the school board, the superintendent, and the central office send explicit and implicit signals that what matters most is student performance on the state test. The state accountability and assessment system will not go away, and by now everyone is aware of its consequences. But is it more important than deep, verifiable learning that has as one, and only one, of its effects that students perform well on the state test? Is satisfactory student performance on the state test the purpose of public education in this community, or is it one indicator of one result of that education?

Which is more important, for the state to document some evidence of what students know and can do, and use that evidence to pressure schools into performing differently, or for schools to consistently and thoroughly understand the performance levels of each student, and use that information to take whatever actions are necessary to raise student performance to much higher levels? These two are not mutually exclusive, but too many school system leaders act as though they are. State oversight of student performance is appropriate, and state intervention to re-form persistently failing schools is necessary, but these roles should not substitute for school administrators and teachers holding themselves accountable for the performance of their students.

School system leaders have to be clear what they think about and where they stand on these issues. If a school system expects schools to spend weeks preparing students to take the state test, it sends a powerful message about the school system's values. On the other hand, if school system leaders expect principals and teachers to change their schools and their practice to increase the performance levels of all students, and if they expect them to produce evidence of that result that is more convincing than student performance on the state test, that sends another message about the school system's values.

An important role of a school system's leaders is to keep the state test in perspective, but at the same time demand that schools take responsibility for presenting compelling evidence of what their students know and can do, and for using that information to implement personal and institutional reforms that improve those results. It is essential for school system leaders to raise and defend the banner of higher levels of performance for all students, and provide schools the support that makes it possible for them to hold themselves accountable, but first the leaders have to be clear about the evidence of higher performance they believe really counts.

The final component of self-accountability is take whatever actions are necessary to improve student performance. This may be the most difficult task for schools and school systems. You are familiar with the litany of excuses schools use not to take actions they know are necessary to increase student achievement: "Mr. Jones is not a very good math teacher but he has been here a long time and, well, you know how it is." "The teachers who need to participate in staff development will not volunteer for it."

"We have so much turnover in our faculty that there is no opportunity for us to develop a stable school culture." "We just do not have time." "We have a group of teachers that do not want to do anything new; they have seen so many initiatives come and go that they are completely cynical." "If we try to do that we will get in trouble with the union." And of course: "We are doing the best we can but we have all these poor and minority and limited English proficient kids, and you know that they always perform poorly on tests."

I take these excuses seriously. They are rooted in real experiences and real concerns. They also portray the school as a static, adult-centered institution, powerless to take itself in hand and make changes necessary to increase the performance levels of all students. So long as these excuses prevail, so long as they are more powerful than principals' and teachers' acting on what they know is the right thing to do, the only means for reform is the kind of external pressures represented by the state test and by vouchers, charter schools, and private scholarship programs.

I take these excuses seriously. They are rooted in real experiences
and real concerns. They also portray the school as a static, adult-centered institution, powerless to take itself in hand and make changes necessary to increase the performance levels of all students.

There is no real hope for self-accountability unless principals and teachers are willing to take whatever actions are necessary to increase their students' performance levels. This will mean inconvenience. It may mean conflict. It certainly means entering a zone of new and perhaps uncomfortable experiences. It also means getting serious, truly serious, about the education and performance of low-achieving students, not just hoping that implementing any "good idea" will improve results.

Educators are facing a professional choice

By this time I may have painted such a daunting picture of self-accountability that you may be thinking to yourselves, "I've got enough problems. This is not for me." It is a challenging prospect. Perhaps I am, as if often the case, too optimistic about what principals and teachers can do. But I believe these educators are facing a choice. Teachers and administrators can either demonstrate that they can cause students to learn at such high levels that the state test is almost irrelevant, or they can continue to define their roles, their students' education, and their schools in terms of student performance on the state test. I suppose the latter is fine for educators who merely want a job and are content to more or less do what the job requires. But for educators who think of themselves as professionals, as people with integrity, internal high standards of performance, imagination, and a strong commitment to their students, then I do not understand how they can, in effect, allow themselves, their students, and their schools to be defined by the state test.

Until the teachers and administrators who do think of themselves as professionals decide to set and bring to fruition an agenda of true high performance for their schools, and until the result is demonstrable deep learning and the compelling application of that learning, then educators' protests about the state accountability and assessment system will have little credibility.

What if there were no TAAS? Would your schools breathe a sigh of relief, not because they would no longer have to put up with the logistics of the testing but because they would no longer be subject to pressures for their students to perform well on the test? Would there be any guiding star, any pressure for making changes necessary for nearly all students to perform at high levels? Would schools have any credible process for holding themselves accountable for high levels of student performance?

Perhaps we will never know the answers to these questions because TAAS, or some iteration of it, may always be with us. It will be, at least until schools hold themselves so accountable that nearly all students perform at high levels.

Thank you.