In an article last week by The Washington Post titled, "Seven things teachers are sick of hearing from school reformers", there was a debate between teachers all over the country -- some who were critical of the teacher who wrote the piece, Ian Altman.

In response, education writer Valerie Strauss of the Post published a comment from a reader, "teechur", who sums up how many teachers feel about the issue of "accountability". "Teechur" has been a teacher for 19 years. 

"We do want accountability but what we want is to be able to teach and be accountable in a way that makes sense," said teechur. "You simply cannot take a population of ANY group of people and expect across the board outcomes. It just doesn’t happen unless there is some form of selecting the incoming candidates. Even there you are still going to have a variety of outcomes because there are so many incoming variables that are beyond our control." 

Teechur continued to explain the makeup of his or her classroom: consisting of 3 girls, 47 boys, 16 students on IEPs and nine languages. Teechur said that his or her point wasn't that kids can't learn, the point is that they cannot learn at the same pace. There are too many external and internal impacts to their day to day lives to keep them all on the same track, such as one of teechurs' students whose mother had cancer. 

"So don’t tell me that I don’t want accountability," teechur said. "My heart bleeds accountability for my kids I teach. Every single year my goal is to be a better teacher than I was the year before. I’ve spent all summer taking courses to be a better teacher because I haven’t perfected it yet after 19 years, and my colleagues would say I’m a pretty good one right now."

Read the full story. 

Article by Kassondra Granata, EducationWorld Contributor