Let’s get school accountability done so we can move on to the hard stuff

Months ago, I wrote about the need for having academic accountability in all our schools: public, private, charter, and home-based. I chose to address accountability because it is the easiest goal to achieve. Given the will to do so, a reasonable set of measurable academic standards can be established by grade level and administered to every child enrolled in any school setting in which children are allowed to participate, including homeschooling. Florida doesn’t seem to want that information because it has not implemented such a system.

We can’t wait any longer to complete the easy step, however, to address the larger challenges. Accountability is only the first step. Schools also need accommodations that make success possible for all children, a fair distribution of resources, and a willingness to wait one’s turn working within a diverse population if we are to support a functional democracy. A democracy that does not have these attributes will fail no matter how much it can “math” and “science.”

Our country and our state continue to “choose” to self-segregate at an unprecedented rate. We live apart, school apart, and even work apart by self-segregating in our workspaces. Look around at where folks choose to sit in work meetings. After years of choosing to separate, we wonder why we don’t understand each other well enough to get along and make progress as a community.

Schools provide the proving ground for accommodating different people of different cultures with different lifestyles, faiths, and languages, and with different kinds of needs that must be met if we are going to give everyone an equitable shot at success. Outlawing “diversity, equity, and inclusion” because they require personal sacrifice seems to be preferable to creating a true community of learners and citizens. And it will require some personal sacrifice.

I hear people say that it isn’t fair to put solving these uncomfortable problems on children. The fact is that we always have. One way or another they are caught in the crossfire of our actions and inactions. What they need is capable adults willing to show them the way. The best teachers do that every day. They work at it. They study how to do it well.

My late husband taught middle school music for 30 years. One year, he had an advanced girl’s chorus ensemble with 30 or so sensitive and talented 13-year-old girls who loved making beautiful music. After several weeks, the administration added four wheelchair-bound, mostly non-verbal boys from our exceptional student program to that class. The rationale was that the boys needed an elective and they would enjoy the music. Their reasoning was sound, but not well-accepted. The girls had emotional meltdowns. Parents demanded schedule changes. They asked how the girls could possibly perform their best with these boys in the room.

It took a skilled teacher to change their mindset; fortunately, they had one. It took time, but once they stopped thinking of themselves as singing in spite of these boys to thinking of themselves as creating beautiful music for these boys, a true learning community was created. Seeing the joy they created became part of the music in the room.

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Every child should be learning to be part of the whole community in which they live and which, as adults, they will govern. Every teacher must have the training in accommodating diversity, providing equity, and supporting inclusion necessary to make human music happen for our children. They need to be accountable for all the academics, but that is the easy part. Becoming responsible for each other and their world is a much greater goal. It’s time to move past the easy part and get on to the big work.

Jan Bennitt is a retired teacher living in Tallahassee, Florida. 

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This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Accountability in schools is the first step. What’s next is harder.