Educational Accountability: From Summer to Long Lasting Change

This is the fifth in a series of blogs curating the Readiness Projects’ Making the Invisible Visible Discussion Series. View the session recording here.

As we move from Making the Invisible Visible to Building Forward Together we are now at a point to identify what we have learned — both from science and from lived experiences over the last nine months — and determine what we can bring into the creation of an 18 months plan that leverages all the learning opportunities and experiences young people have that allow them to thrive to their full extent. We have opportunity now to use winter and spring to optimize summer 2021 as a springboard to this process of reimagining learning and development.

While we consider and dig into engaging and coordinating differently with partners, mobilizing all adults, and elevating youth voice and agency as part of Building Forward Together, we must also consider what we have learned about and how we might reimagine accountability. What do we really mean by accountability and what does it mean for it to be shared — between summer and school year? between schools and community partners?

Accountability is inextricably intertwined with what we assess and what we measure. Reimagining accountability will require us to look at the full set of data that can tell us whether or not a young person is thriving. We must consider how we measure the skills that matter most, how we measure young people’s well-being (see Turnaround’s recently released well-being index), and how we allow access for all students to demonstrate mastery though means beyond testing. All of these measurements must be grounded in context. Dr. Pamela Cantor from Turnaround for Children reminded us that “any measurement of a kid is a proxy for the condition under which it was measured…yet we assume the measurement is a measurement of something a child knows.”

Without context it is easy for our systems of accountability to live in a place of blaming — or worse yet pathologizing — a young person or their family for the results without regard to the impact their environment has on them. Hedy Chang, Attendance Works, encouraged us to think about how we move “from blame to problem solving…from autopsy to diagnostic. We need to have data that is immediate so we can diagnose the lack of an opportunity to learn so we can change and ensure opportunity.”

In some cases, the measurements and assessments already available to us can do this. We just need to ensure we are using them for the purpose for which they are designed, and we need to let go of those that are not useful. Rather than each community stakeholder in a learning and development ecosystem looking at their own set of data, we can engage in collaborative conversation and questioning. Hal Smith, National Urban League suggested we ask, “What are the social determinants of education? What do we need to be considering as we talk about young people thriving?”

Then, each stakeholder can begin to identify their responsibility as an individual and as part of a community and determine how they can be responsive to young people and community toward shared outcomes.

Summer 2021 provides us the first opportunity to practice rethinking accountability and leveraging data to problem solve in real time. As we seek to shape a summer of reconnecting, healing, and learning:

• We can begin to view absenteeism and other measures as leading indicators of a lack of opportunity to learn or meaningful relationships for families. How might we use these metrics to identify the young people we want to actively seek out for reengagement in summer programs as an on ramp back into school?
• We can begin to think about how summer can include all learning partners to accelerate learning. How might we reimagine “summer school” as a range of learning opportunities that young people seek out and want to engage in? How can we work not on parallel tracks, but collectively, to advocate for the funding that will be needed to stand up robust, enriching summer programs?
• We can begin to listen to young people and use their voice to inform our design. How might we collaboratively ask young people to tell us what their learning goals are for summer, share their reflections on which learning environments and practices they’ve been in since March worked or didn’t; advise us on what we should continue and what we should let go of?
• We can begin to identify what is here to stay (like blended models that will be critical for career success in the future) and create tools that don’t perpetuate inequities. How might we identify strategies to pilot this summer when the stakes are lower and families and youth have a stronger, clearer role in determining the pace and mix of activities?
• We can begin to fully acknowledge all the places that young people learn. How might we implement practices so that young people, families, and the learning and development ecosystem provides opportunity to make meaning of the learning that happens everywhere young people spend their time?

To make any of this real, now is a critical time for all adults to interrogate their own practices to determine how they are contributing to inequities, disparities, and segregation and what we must adjust and change to create equitable systems of learning and development moving forward. All of the data we gather and systems of accountability will only work and we will only be able to move past incrementalism if adults are compelled to learn, ask questions, and use data to make substantive change.

What will you do in the winter and spring of 2021 to be ready to optimize summer as a springboard to reimagined learning and development?