Too much talk about school accountability

To the "greatest generation," it was called personal responsibility. They didn't talk about it, they just did it.

Today, politicians call it "accountability." They talk about it, but it has nothing to do with them. It's someone else, usually those at the bottom of the food chain. Like maybe school teachers?

Accountability is the snakebite medicine state politicians now choose to solve all ailments afflicting education. When the public complains about education, politicians quickly call for more accountability, usually from teachers, which translates into more laws requiring more regulations and more reporting requirements.

Education administrators, being responsible bureaucrats, immediately respond by adopting more regulations that generate data to document all the procedures they followed to prove they are complying with the new laws.

Taxpayers can thank legislators for funding and creating more bureaucratic red tape to collect and mothball data than the Office of Education (OE) can use to demonstrate accountability. The system is appropriately called "Data Warehouse."

What's in a name? Data Warehouse hordes all kinds of data in case someone asks an uneducated question like, "What does education do?" The OE proudly states in their 2002-03 annual report that it "provides accountability through implementing law and policy and and collecting and reporting information." It reports on process, rather than results, that does not add value to the education of children; but it sure fattens the government that politicians keep telling us they are fighting.

The Legislature funded the "data warehouse" to keep track of how well the schools are implementing all the state and federal mandates: U-PASS that collects "comprehensive" data, general purpose data and those of the Leave No Child Behind requirements. The annual report even has a separate chapter titled, "Accountability." It highlights how the office has carried out the legislators' concern about schools, student accountability and the "increased number of laws, both federal and state, passed on this issue."

Unwittingly, legislators who focus on accountability now become part of the problem by overburdening the education system with more administrators to write regulations and create reporting requirements. The "regulators" in turn require local school districts to collect data for the "Data Warehouse."