We’re all aware that standards create accountability. They give direction and focus to all that are involved. Later, we can discuss standards that are arbitrarily high (California’s teaching standards) and close to impossible to meet.
I received my teaching credential in 1991 and, unable to get a teaching contract, spent a year as a substitute teacher (before the birth of teaching standards, learning standards, professional standards, etc). After a year, still needing to feed my children, I stopped working as a substitute teacher and returned to the private sector to earn an income.
In 1999 I returned to teaching… not with a contract… “just” as a substitute teacher. Wow! What a difference.
California had implemented teaching standards and I could walk into any classroom and immediately know what grade- level I was in, see what was being taught in that classroom and more importantly the students were able to see what was expected of them, the direction and purpose of their learning.
I see standards as a good thing. It was state teaching standards that guided and supported my teaching for seven years. It was a time of my district’s reform and I only had the state’s standards to direct my instruction. I would not have known what to teach without them.
School standards that focus on the school-site working environment would create accountability in the U.S.’s educational system - where currently none exists. As you can see from the (slightly) simplified Accountability Table below, there’s only one entity within the U.S. schools systems accountable to teachers, and that is Teachers’ Unions.
This lack of accountability to teachers is driving them from the profession - in droves.
The Link to Teachers' Success...
Dr. Kathleen Salzano, Ed.D.
