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Home » Current Issues » Education: » Accountability in Education
Accountability in Education
Jay Brummett, Position on Accountability in Education:
I recognize that our nation’s public education system has been in crisis for decades; this continued failure can not be allowed to continue. As a community we are all responsible for educating our children. It is time that we all accept our responsibility and be held accountable for the poor state of the schools in Utah and our nation as a whole. It is easy to blame the teacher’s union as being responsible or simply to blame parents, but the reality is that we all have enough blame to share. It is not about playing the “blame game” rather it is about accepting our responsibility and moving forward with accountability.
Parents:
We can't expect schools or educators to replace the responsibility of parents. Parents have responsibilities to contribute the successful to education of their children, but that does not absolve schools and educators from their responsibilities. We can hold parents accountable for their child’s attendance and behavior in school. Make the parents of children who “sluff” school or who cause disruption in school to pay some reimbursement to the community for their failure to help educate their children.
Teachers:
We can strengthen accountability systems to reward schools and educators for excellent work that improves the quality of education while sanctioning them for inferior work.
Administrators and School Boards:
Our school boards and district administrators have responsibility and direct management of Utah’s schools. The officials together with the UEA tend to look to the state legislature rather than at their own responsibility ability to affect positive outcomes for students. The most efficient school districts in the United States only place about $0.65 of every $1.00 into actually educating out children. A 35% overhead is extremely high in any business operation, and we must not forget that our schools are in the business of educating our children. If we can get the business side of education to adopt better business practices, we would have more money for the education side of education. There are lots of inefficiencies in our school districts, which could be recovered and used to provide for the needs of the classroom. We can hold schools districts accountable to use funding in the classroom and to lower overhead (non-instructional) costs; literally an increase in efficiency of only 1% would free over $22, 488,944 for use in the Utah classrooms. Surely our school district officials can find a 1% increase in efficiency and put 22 million dollars back into the classrooms.
Citizens and Businesses:
We pay our taxes. Whether we have school age children or not, all citizens have a duty to ensure that Utah’s children are well educated. The simple reality is that high school dropouts cost our society as a whole: Welfare costs, prison costs, and in lost tax revenue because unemployment and low wages common among dropouts results in dropouts paying less tax; the rest of us end up paying for the failures of our dropouts.
Since we pay the taxes, we have a right to see that our money is effectively spent. Since we pay the taxes and bear the costs of failure, we must hold schools and elected officials responsible for ensuring that our tax dollars are not only used for their intended purpose, but deliver the service for which they were intended. We can vote for legislators, governors, and school board official who demand transparency, results, and accountability from our schools by requiring failing educators and schools to change or go out business. We must all reward successful educators and schools with our dollars, support, and patronage.
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