The Tug of War in Education: Balancing Accountability and Creativity

Being an educator for 25 years, I have gone through many ups and downs in my career. The road has always been quite bumpy and will continue to be as long as there are kids attending schools. In the midst of this hustle, there emerged a game of tug of war between different parties that are involved in the educational sector. This ongoing struggle has led to an ever lasting Blame game between teachers, administrators, parents, and policy makers especially if the outcomes are not favourable. Numerous were the times when an administrator would come into my class and ask the eternal questions “Why aren’t you teaching the way we want you to teach? Why don’t you use the framework we designed for you? Why aren’t your students meeting the performance targets we set by this or that deadline?” and many other questions that this article will not be enough to state them all.

Based on my experience, the core issue within the educational sector is that of contradicting perspectives. Teachers want and work for healthy, organic growth of their kids, whereas administrators, parents, and policy makers prioritize numbers. What matters for them are results, growth percentage, and success – or – failure outcomes.

In fact, this is what everybody wants, however, we need to ground our expectations in reality. Learning is a process that does not take place overnight, it takes months, years, and, most importantly, a lot of preparation, effort, and dedication.

First, we need to acknowledge the gap between expectations and outcomes. Once identified, we have to decide on how to address it, should we implement a top-down problem-solving strategy, or should we encourage a bottom-up approach that allows solutions to emerge from those directly involved in the process?

If we implement a top – down strategy, the educational policy will be decided by decision makers such as administrators, policymakers, and leaderboards. This approach guarantees centralized decision making and standardization, and it is measured against and accountability system where success and failure are decided by whether- or – not meeting targets set by these parties. Even though this approach has its own advantages such as consistency in how teaching and learning take place, easy control of the entire system as well as scalability which allows large scale improvements to take place across schools in a short time, it overlooks a few crucial facts. Most importantly, this approach is disconnected from the classroom reality. If designed without teacher input, any educational approach that has as a purpose to address improving students’ performance is doomed to fail completely or at least in part. Such an approach will not be flexible enough which will stifle teachers’ creativity to come up with ideas that would really benefit their students. This, in turn, will lead to unmotivated teachers to implement the system, and subsequently failure with the blame often placed on teachers for not adhering to a system they had little influence in shaping.

Does this mean that a bottom – up approach is the solution?

This approach requires input from teachers, students, as well as parents, and everyone involved in the teaching and learning processes. In contrast with the previous approach, this one fosters more flexibility and offers greater creativity spaces for teachers, the real players in the game. This requires context – specific solutions that may be a complete success in one school, or educational environment, and a complete failure in another. In addition, it promotes collaborative decision – making in which school boards, educators, and learners are involved in shaping what works best for their unique environment. I believe the main advantage of such an approach is that it is student-centred since teachers interact mainly with students, they will design strategies that are more responsive to students’ needs and therefore will lead to better outcomes.

However, as shiny as it may seem, this approach has a few disadvantages such as lack of uniformity across schools due to the absence of unified standards and, hence, inconsistencies in educational quality. Unlike the first approach, this one is slower in implementation as it takes longer to develop and spread due to the fact that it is built on consistent feedback from different parties. Another drawback might be fragmentation, even within the same school, due to the lack of coordination.

So, what shall be done to guarantee the involvement of all parties but at the same time maintain consistency and standardization?

A hybrid approach is the answer, but how can we implement that? We need to tailor an approach that draws from the strengths of both approaches while lessening the effect of weaknesses. A centralized direct will establish clear educational goals such as literacy targets, technology integration, and equity to ensure consistency among different schools. In addition, instead of setting rigid frameworks, there should be flexible guidelines that give teachers the freedom to adapt strategies to their individual classroom needs. The result here will be empowering teachers as they are given the autonomy to develop methods that address their students’ needs, resulting in more effective teaching.

Teachers’ input must not, at any stage, be overlooked. They must be involved in policy making through constant feedback at different stages. This feedback will help adjust educational policies for the best of students’ interest.

A key pillar of education is innovation. Passionate teachers like to try new methods and strategies all the time to find what works best, however, an accountability system must be in place to make sure that targets set by policy makers are being met at any stage of the educational process. This, in turn, will open the door for professional development to cover the areas that teachers really need assistance in. It will provide teachers with new innovative methods and strategies within the set framework and therefore guarantee filling the requirements of both school boards and teachers. This, also, can be achieved through continuous administrative assistance by providing resources and PD sessions that will help improve the quality of education provided. Administrators must not focus on compliance solely but they have to put into consideration the role played by teachers.