The Accountability Mindset: A blueprint for a worthwhile educational accountability

Effective accountability systems are surprisingly easy to observe in effective organizations of all kinds. Unfortunately for schools, those leading the school reform agenda chose to follow a different path, one that uses all the right words but that opted for tools and systems that are incapable of achieving any of the policy goals they envision. The reason for this can be compared to selecting a jackhammer to do the work of a needle: it would be the wrong tool for the job.

John Tanner has spent well over a decade researching and exploring what a meaningful educational accountability could look like. His findings are profound and simple: effective organizations of all types follow the same underlying formula when it comes to their organizational accountabilities, which is not the accountability schools currently use. Furthermore, the accountability structure assigned to schools was designed for an entirely different purpose, and excellence, organizational effectiveness, innovation, equity, and quality are not in that purpose. The fact is that the harder schools work within the current system the less likely they are to meet the needs of the students they serve.

What makes this book and its content accessible to a wide audience is that Tanner takes the voice of a high school principal guiding her team through the process of converting to a True Accountability system. That voice is an amalgam of thousands of conversations with and among educators doing the work, and as such is intended to make the process both clear and meaningful. Newton High is a fictional high school, but every dialogue that takes place there has occurred multiple times in real life.

Finally solving the school accountability conundrum is long overdue. With the publication of The Accountability Mindset, solving one of the most pressing problems in education is now that much closer to being a reality.