What happens when schools cannot hold students accountable? In this episode of If Teachers Ruled the World, I sit down with fellow English teacher and former colleague, Laura French, to talk about the hidden consequences of current education policies. Laura shares a powerful story about a student who was passed through the system year after year without mastering basic skills, and the impossible position that left her in as his high school teacher. This conversation is honest, thought-provoking, and a reminder of how policy decisions shape classroom realities.
Graduation Rate Pressure and CCRPI Scores
Laura’s story reveals the deep connection between student accountability in education and systemic graduation rate pressure. Teachers want to support students’ growth, but they often find themselves forced to meet benchmarks that may not reflect true learning. This highlights the importance of student accountability in education.
Furthermore, student accountability in education is essential for fostering a culture of responsibility among students. When students understand their role in the learning process, they are more likely to engage and succeed. The emphasis on student accountability in education can lead to a more meaningful learning experience, allowing students to recognize the value of their efforts.
Understanding the nuances of student accountability in education can help bridge the gap between policy and practice, allowing teachers to better meet the needs of their students.
CCRPI scores put additional weight on classrooms. These accountability measures may look good in reports, but they can pull teachers away from authentic instruction. When numbers drive the system, students and teachers are left to navigate policies that do not always match real needs.
Teacher Evaluation Systems and Contradictions in Policy
Our conversation also dives into how teacher evaluation systems intersect with student accountability. Teachers are expected to deliver results based on standardized measures, even though research shows most student outcomes are influenced by factors outside the classroom.
This creates a contradiction: we encourage students to adopt a growth mindset, but the system itself operates with a fixed mindset. Teachers are left carrying the emotional toll of trying to reconcile these conflicting expectations.
This discussion reinforces why student accountability in education is fundamental in shaping responsible future citizens.
What Teacher Voice Could Bring to Education Policy
Laura introduces her own “teacher law” on student accountability. Her proposal highlights what might be possible if teacher voice had a central role in shaping education policy.
Instead of relying on evaluation systems built around numbers and percentages, teachers could design accountability models that reflect the complexity of learning and honor both student effort and teacher expertise.
Key Takeaway: When schools cannot hold students accountable, policies shift the burden onto teachers. To create meaningful change, evaluation and accountability systems must reflect classroom realities and include teacher voice at the center.
Key Moments:
1:36 – Introduction to Laura French and the critical need for student accountability in education through her unique three-state teaching perspective
10:26 – Laura’s groundbreaking teacher law on student accountability in education and why “students aren’t widgets” in our current system
14:12 – Danny’s story: How graduation rate pressure and lack of accountability set students up for failure in the real world
26:31 – The devastating impact of CCRPI scores and teaching priorities that prioritize credit completion over actual learning
32:38 – Growth mindset versus fixed systems: How teacher evaluation systems contradict the very principles we’re asked to teach
41:51 – What accountability would look like if teachers ruled the world: Kentucky’s innovative portfolio system as a model for real assessment
47:44 – Practical classroom strategies for promoting student responsibility when education policy and teacher voice are often ignored by policymakers
Want to share your own “teacher law”? Submit your idea here.
Prefer Reading? I’ve Got You….
Show Transcript
I’m so pleased to introduce Laura French. She’s been teaching for 25 years and in three different states. This gives her a unique perspective on how education policies play out differently across the country. She’s seen firsthand how the same mandates can create completely different realities depending on where you’re teaching. Laura and I were colleagues back in my English teaching days, and one of the things I’ve always admired about her is that she’s a deep thinker. When you ask Laura a question, she’ll pause, she’ll just go very quiet for a moment, and then come out with something just so profound. She has this gift for taking abstract concepts and relating them to the contemporary world through analogies that just make everything click. Laura is still teaching English today, and when she responded to my teacher law question, her answer revealed something troubling about well intentioned policies. I knew immediately this was a conversation you needed to hear. I hope you’ll enjoy this conversation as much as I did. All right, let’s hear what Ms. French has to say.
I’m here today with Laura French, an English teacher extraordinaire, who knew me way back when I was an English teacher, and that was a very, very, very long time ago. Laura, how long has it been since we worked together?
Oh, wow, at least nine years. I think, I think this is my ninth year at my newer school.
Okay, so a while.
Yeah, sadly.
Well, I’m really glad to have you here today. It’s great to see you again. I loved working with you at our old stomping ground. Yeah, we were in the English department together, and then I jumped ship, went to social studies, and we still worked together at the same school. Do you remember how nobody could ever tell us apart?
I do remember that, and I remember thinking it was kind of strange because beyond the color of our hair, I guess, our general complexion, relative age group, build, I mean, you know, now that I’m saying it, people could be forgiven. But I do know kind of what it’s like to be a twin now, I guess, because when people would act like they knew me, I just would play along so they wouldn’t be embarrassed.
I did the same thing. People would call me Ms. French and I’d say, yeah, what you need?
Yeah, yeah.
And do you remember that time that I was on the way to my son’s school on my planning and I caught some of our students skipping, and I turned them in to the resource officer, and he wrote a report, and the school secretary wrote a report, and they both said that Ms. French turned the kids in.
No, but that is funny, and I’m sorry that I’m the one who got credit for your crime fighting.
No, I didn’t correct them because I thought it was funny. I’ve been in social studies for a really long time now. When I read your response about critical thinking and communication tools in your form that you filled out, I thought, that’s Laura. I remember that you were always talking about critical thinking and communication tools. Do you want to talk about that for just a second, which you think is really important for students? And also, I think your elementary school thing is kind of interesting, like, what kids should learn in elementary school.
You know, initially, when a person would think about being an English teacher, I think probably the first thing I thought about literature, grammar, writing, but I didn’t think of it in the terms of broader sense. And now that I’ve been doing it a while, I feel like a lot of it boils down to transferable skill. Because what I like to tell my students is, if the stuff that we do in my room is only useful in my room, then I don’t think I’m doing a very good job. Needs to be applicable outside.
Really good. So I don’t want to put you on the spot. But can you give me an example of something that you do in your room that maybe we would think of as very non transferable, like studying Shakespeare, or something that you’re trying to make applicable to the real world.
Well, I guess since you’ve said Shakespeare, you know, when I’m trying to get them to not decide ahead of time it’s not useful or that they hate it–in a sidebar, obviously, there’s things that enrich a person’s life that don’t necessarily translate to monetary gain in their career, or what have you. It just improves our lives to know some things. But I would say the language isn’t very familiar to you, the structure of it, but you know the words, or you know most of the words. Use this as practice to read through something that’s kind of difficult. You might be reading a contract that is uses some lingo that you are unaccustomed to, or sentence structure or what have you, but you’re already accustomed to picking out, focusing on what you do understand. I feel like some of the literature doesn’t really hit with kids. I teach British literature, which is a requirement for graduation in my district, although, interestingly, not the state. My district goes for it to be British literature. Yeah, I investigated that, and apparently there is another one that could be used for graduate credit.
Do you know what that is off the top of your head?
Maybe modern literature, but I’d have to go back. I think that I got a little frustrated and didn’t revisit it, because a lot of what’s in the curriculum is very old, and especially non white students, you know, and even white kids. Can they relate to stories told by Anglo Saxons? What I try to do with a Beowulf, etc, is just focus on the superhero aspects of it. And, you know, any kind of story structure stuff, not everybody’s gonna read fiction for fun when they graduate, but most people watch movies.
That’s true. We just went to see Fantastic Four. Superhero movie.
There you go. So you know, if you focus on archetypes or tropes, there are certain things that just hit for human beings that they just like in a story. We like stories, so let’s look at the structure a little bit, or that sort of thing. But it is harder for things that are 1000 years old to hit the same way, although, I mean, they do like the dirty stories from the Canterbury too.
Those are always good the Miller’s Tale–that’s the classic one–Miller’s Tale.
It certainly is.
That’s one thing that I’ve always really admired about your approach to English. You’re very practical, and you’re always thinking about, how can this transfer to the student’s life? So I think that that is an excellent approach, and it’s one that I don’t see. I mean, I see some English teachers taking it, but a lot of English teachers don’t really take that. They kind of just want to say, okay, let’s study this literature and just talk about why it’s so great, and all of the imagery and themes and all of that. But I like how you make it applicable.
A mentor of mine at one of the schools where I’ve taught, she said, let’s just use the Great Gatsby as an example. I don’t remember the specific book, but she said, we’re not teaching the Great Gatsby. We’re teaching, I don’t know, symbolism using the Great Gatsby. We’re teaching the impact of setting on story using the Great Gatsby. So she kind of helped me see the emphasis of vehicle to critical thinking. It’s not just–here’s what happened and then here’s what happened. It’s analytical. So again, try to think about what’s transferable. If you can think deeply about a novel, then you could probably think deeply about something else.
That was a brilliant mentor you had. So now let’s segue into your policy, because this segment is the podcast’s namesake. If Teachers Ruled the World, and you came up with a policy that I thought was really good, and it’s something that, well, teachers at my school have been abuzz about for a while, we’ve talked a lot about, you know, being called a bad school if we hold students accountable for their learning. And so can you tell us what your policy is and then break it down just a little bit?
I can’t remember the exact wording, but it was more something to the effect of a student should be allowed to be accountable for their learning or failure to learn, because it feels like a lot of educational policy, is developed by well meaning people. They’re not, their intentions are very good, academics and legislators, who want all students to succeed. They want schools to teach children what they need to know to move to the next grade. They want students to master material, they want them to graduate. These are all noble goals, but children are not widgets. It’s not, we’re not all cranking out product. If students don’t advance, then the state says, Well, you’re a bad school because X number of students failed these grades
Quality control in a factory?
Yes.
Yeah, I love that. Students aren’t widgets. We’re not cranking out products.
Yeah, and they’re all, you don’t know who’s gonna be good at what? So an elementary school teacher is under pressure to, I don’t know, promote a child from fourth to fifth grade, drags them through. The elementary school is under pressure to promote to middle school. The middle school doesn’t want to have bad statistics, so they give a kid 50 chances to get a 70 on something so they can get them out. It goes all the way through until we end up with seniors who are functionally illiterate. You have algebra classes full of students with very poor number sense. They’re just basics that they’re missing, and someone cynical or outside of the system could say, oh, well, that child has been failed by their schools and they’ve been failed by their teachers. Maybe, but I refuse to believe that by the time I see a student at 12th grade their previous 11 plus teachers were all bad. That’s just not even logical.
No, it’s not.
And seems like all the people who have consequences when a student fails are the teacher. Why? Like your personal statistics, you know, why did two people in your second grade class not get promoted? What’s wrong with you? If you have a certain number, somebody’s going to ask the administrator, why are you such a failure to have this many kids not do well?
Maybe saying that, well, this child is still reading on a first grade level, and we need to bring the child up before they can move on to the next level. Right?
Yes, absolutely. And there’s enormous pressure to pass kids on. There’s enormous pressure to have a certain percentage of kids do this or do that. It’s sad. You know, I get these seniors. I want to do stuff with them. I want to give them tools so they can do better in college or wherever they’re headed next. And, you know, have these ideas, or I’m sorry, well, what if do they need this, I need that. And people are being honest with me and just saying, to paraphrase, nobody really cares. They just need you to get these kids graduated.
Right? I know exactly what you’re talking about.
We have to care a lot about our stats, or we’re a bad school.
Right? Oh, my goodness, let’s just bring it down to the individual level, because you shared a story about a student that you’re calling Danny, that really illustrates why this law that you mentioned is needed. Can you walk us through what happened?
He was in a senior class. He was a poor reader. He did not enjoy school, which I am not surprised, because if you are not a good reader, you’re going to struggle all around. He was from a disadvantaged background. His family moved fairly frequently due to financial issues. He was a student who worked with the social workers on campus. He had access to extra help with homework, tutoring, food, clothing, because he he did have a very disadvantaged situation, but he really could not read very well. And I wanted to figure out well, does that mean he had been missed, like, should he have gotten a referral at some point for services? He was deemed well, I looked at his records, for whatever reason, it was decided that he did not need it.
So he did not, they decided that he didn’t need an IEP, an individual education plan?
Correct. But, you know, I’m almost kind of suspicious, because I just don’t know how somebody could be that struggle that much without having some kind of issue. Now it’s entirely possible, you know, people who are hungry or who are tired or, you know, stressed from the constant worry about money. Yeah, it’d be hard to learn in that situation. So it could be as simple as that or that aside, there is individual agency within that system, and I think some of it, at least in our school, was that people understood that he had a difficult situation, and they felt bad for him, which I also understand, but it sort of translated into him not being held accountable. He has a difficult situation, so….
Which, ultimately, when you think about it, is just gonna set him up for future failure.
Oh yeah, he’s not put it in the workplace. And ultimately, it did harm him, because he wanted to be in the military, and he did so poorly on the ASVAB that he wasn’t really a good candidate and then, in addition, you know, you do have to graduate from high school. And so he was missing a lot of credits. At my school, it doesn’t, you don’t have to pass one English class to go to the next. They just put you in it.
Right? That’s a whole other issue, right?
Right. So he was missing credits, but we’re still trying to graduate him, if possible. But he would ask to go see the social worker and get a pass and then disappear for half an hour, an hour, just wander campus.
So he was taking advantage of the situation?
Yes, and I get it, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t my, you know, I’m that teacher. I’m not going to let you go somewhere just because you asked, but because somebody in another class would let him go, I wouldn’t see him, or he wouldn’t come to class. Sometimes, when he was there, he was rude, which is fine. Teenagers can be rude.
No.
Nobody really wanted to discipline him seriously because they really don’t want to put people in in school suspension if they, quote, are only disrespectful, because they’re trying to not have bad statistics as far as discipline is concerned. So, oh, well, we’ll work with her. A lot of people like, but, you know, a lot of people like, I like my daughter, but she’ll have consequences, right?
Right. I was the same with my son.
Yeah. And his mother was supportive, and she wanted him to do well, but she just….
That shows her love for him, that she, I mean, she, she wanted for him to have consequences too.
She didn’t like, obviously, there’s hardly, you know, she’s like, you need to do the right thing. You know she would say that, but I think she just worked long hours. She was just overwhelmed, so she did what she could. But ultimately, too, a 17 year old is gonna do what he’s gonna do, you know.
True.
And I didn’t dislike him. He was a nice kid. He just–you know–but I tried to do what I could to help him. I knew he wanted to go in the military, so I talked to him about, well, here’s some stuff we can look at that’ll help on the ASFAB. He really liked the ROTC instructor. I talked to him. I talked to his guidance counselor. I talked to the–oh, here’s some assignments that he can do with y’all and the social workers, like, here’s some stuff you could do with him to try to get his credit. I was doing most of the work trying to figure out all these different things I could do to help him. And it became apparent when he thought he wasn’t gonna graduate. Then he kicked it into the gear. Then he started doing stuff. Then he started coming to class, staying awake during class, all these things, because there was gonna be a consequence that he did not want. He wanted to graduate and go in the military. So I thought, what would it have been like–everybody has a different ability level, but wherever it is, it can be raised. What would have been like if when he was 10, he was like, oh no, I’m not gonna move up with my friends. I better work. I better do what I can here. So, yeah.
Yeah, what would it look like if his fifth grade teacher when he was 10, if his fifth grade teacher could have held him back without any consequences to the school or to himself or herself. Do you think that maybe Danny’s life would have been different?
It’s possible, or, yeah, because some of that is just, it’s not even abilities. Unfortunately, a lot of school is just, well, it’s actually like a lot of life. Just show up and do the work. You know, you don’t have to be a genius. You just have to put some effort in. Everybody can learn something. But it’s so depressing how many students I have who decide they’re going to be world class about the middle of April because they want to graduate. Oh, that’s a hard deadline. That is a specific consequence. I mean, how many students have you had where you tell them, well, you’re not passing, and they shrug, you know, how much do I have to do so I qualify for credit repair?
Right, at the 11th hour they start trying when they haven’t been trying all year or all semester. What would you say? And you did mention that it was depressing. Would you say that there was an emotional toll being his teacher, knowing you were expected, essentially, to provide, it seems like 10 years of education in one year if you’re going to do the job right?
Oh, absolutely. I never dreamed when I went to grad classes forever ago, when I decided I wanted to be a teacher, that I would need to teach reading, that I would tell people that you use big letters for people’s names.
You don’t think about that as a high school teacher, do you? I mean, in training, obviously it’s part of our reality.
Sure, but it’s so frustrating to read the state standards. Here’s what a student should master in X grade. Well, all the standards are predicated on a belief that a student will have mastered the previous ones before coming to you.
That’s so true.
So how are we going to move forward if they don’t have a foundation? And this is all kids. This isn’t just, you know, struggling students, all kids, a lot of them are not where we would want them to be based upon what’s in the standards and all that professional development resources. We had a great grammar resource that they said you are only allowed to use the resources that match the grade you’re teaching. And that was rough because, you know, they’re supposed to know how to use commas way before my grade. So there was a lot of comma stuff I couldn’t ask.
Oh my, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, because that’s pretty typical. But wow, that is just telling you to, you know, bring these kids up, teach these kids, and then ripping the tools to do it, to actually practically do it away from you.
Yeah, isn’t that how it typically Is, though, but and all of those, those people above my pay grade, that it’s not that they’re saying, oh, we can’t I’m not even calling those people out. You know, some some administrators are better than others at balancing keeping kids accountable, but they’re under pressure the central office, who’s under pressure from the state. That’s just it. And a friend of mine, and I have no idea why, this hadn’t really occurred to me previously, a friend of mine blew me away. He said, If you think about a college, he said, what if you were talking about a college that was difficult to get into, and it was the coursework was very difficult, and people, like a decent number of people, fluncked out he said, you would say, wow, that’s a really good school. That’s a really tough school.
That’s so true.
But it’s just the opposite. And I have no idea why I thought of that, but…..
I have never thought about that, but that is so true, like your friend needs to be on the show.
Oh, absolutely. You could think about, yeah, if you’re talking about some college where, yeah, all you have to do is apply and you’re going to graduate in four years.
Who wants to go there?
Who respects that degree? Yeah.
Yeah, well, maybe lots of people want to go there, but you’re right, that degree won’t be respected.
Yeah. And so what this engenders is that when a student does meet that hard deadline of graduation and they can’t, their parents are often baffled, because their response is sometimes to the effect of, well, she’s been coming to school 12 years, he’s there every day. She does her work. Kids tell their parents they do. But as I, as both of us, have had to tell students like getting it done and doing it well, uh, two different things.
Very different.
But you know my initial reaction when a parent’s surprised–why wouldn’t he graduate? And we’re all thinking, because he doesn’t do anything. From the parents perspective, well, there’s never been a problem before, because he’s never been held accountable before. He’s allowed to turn in a half a semester’s worth of assignments the last week of school. So really, all the consequences are for the teacher.
That’s true.
And then, of course, because we have a lot of students like that that we need to focus on, we spend a lot of time dragging through very reluctant kids. When there’s a number of kids who are just quiet and just do what they’re supposed to do. They don’t get the attention from us that I think they deserve.
Right?
No question. This kid’s gonna pass. You know, they’re they’re doing all right, but what if I could give that kid some more attention and get them from Bs to As? What if we could get this C kid who never causes any problems. He always passes. He always says. What if we could get him from a C to a B?
That’s the million dollar question. We do, we spend a lot of our time focusing on the at risk kids, which, I mean, we should, obviously,
Absolutely.
No, we definitely should. But I think that a lot of the reason why, well, when we do it, to the extent that we do it, we’re neglecting everybody else, and that’s problematic.
Because the state says you’re a bad school if, you know, this child doesn’t pass.
So I know you have taught in three different states, and that’s a really great perspective for me, because I’ve only taught in the one. I teach in Georgia, and that’s the only state I’ve ever taught in, and for us, it is CCRPI, Georgia’s College and Career Readiness Performance Index. That’s how schools are rated. And so there is a lot of pressure for us to enroll as many kids as we can in CTE and AP courses, to enroll as many kids as we can in all of the advanced courses, and then to raise our graduation rates, right? That’s how schools are graded. So how does that CCRPI pressure affect what happens in your classroom, specifically?
You know, I think it’s probably pretty easy for me. It’s just, we just got to get these kids graduated if they’re anywhere near. The other thing is that I, for a number of years, have facilitated one block a day of class where students make up credits online. It’s a large program. There’s always other teachers in there. There’s a number of us. So a student could could make up up to eight credits per semester. And you will be unsurprised to hear that for a number of kids, learning is not the goal. Getting the credit is the goal.
Yeah, checking the boxes, getting the credit, moving them through. That’s what things like CCRPI do.
Yes.
They make it about checking boxes instead of about learning.
Right.
Yeah.
And so you know, if somebody’s already struggling. They’re behind their credit. I get it, but we have helped to feed that. Because, what? How did this person get so many credits behind to begin with? Why do we keep passing them along? Because the number of kids, they’re not in this program, most of them do not have IEPs. A lot of them are just incredibly unmotivated, and they probably do have deficits of some kind, but we gotta get ’em out. And so that’s frustrating, because I’m not there to be a babysitter. I want people to learn things. I want them to, whatever skill level they have, improve it. It’s just the nature of the beast. I don’t think that any of the administrators at my school see their mission as we must get these kids outta here in four years no matter what. I don’t care if they learn anything or not. If you asked any of them, they wouldn’t say that. That’s not what they’re about. But they’re under a tremendous amount of pressure to get them out with their cohort in four years.
They are. They really are. And, you know, I wonder if maybe there’s a broader economic piece at play here. Do you think–I don’t know–you’re a lot smarter than I am, Ms. French, so I want to ask you what you think here. These scores, when we look at scores, they affect property values, real estate, community perception, all of that stuff. Would you agree with that and think that maybe that’s part of the pressure that administrators might be feeling, maybe, from the board and superintendents and people who have an interest in attracting people to the community. Do you think that plays a part in it?
Yes, some of it is definitely, hey, look at us, how great we are. But if we’re gonna hold people accountable, then we have to put things in place to support people in that. There’s a lot of kids who start school already behind. They have not been exposed to things that other kids have been exposed to. Maybe they haven’t gotten to go on vacations to visit other places. Maybe their parents did not read to them. Maybe they just they start out at a disadvantage. What if we had universal preschool? What if every kid was tosome degree ready to learn when they got there? What if elementary school teachers didn’t have to spend their time worrying about if a six year old could pass a state test and they just focused on reading and math–just nail that?
Yes, what a dream. Yeah, standardized tests for a third grader. It just seems kind of ludicrous, doesn’t it?
It does. And kids learn at different rates. In a gifted class, one time I made some joke. I said, Oh, I thought this was a gifted class, and this kid said we were superstars in first grade, and we’ve been coasting ever since.
I like that kid.
Me too, because he’s got something right. If you look at the makeup of a number of gifted classes, it’s kids whose lives have been enriched by things their parents were able to do to expose them to.
Yes.
And so some of it is just background, and it’s frustrating for a school with a different demographic to get compared to another school. I mean, my parents went to college, their friends went to college, so the adults in my life had certain expectations. They worked in different jobs. There were things I was aware of I maybe wouldn’t have been aware of otherwise. There was no question I was going to graduate from high school. That wasn’t even a–that wasn’t even a thing–that was a given, that was an expectation. And because of my parents’ background, I had all, I had tools I needed to get there. So it almost seems unfair if you just take a population of kids whose parents, for the most part, graduated from college and work in some profession. Yeah, those kids are gonna graduate from high school. And I’m not saying that we need to not have high expectations, but we do want to have realistic ones. And if you truly want for people, you know, all students to learn a high level–well, try to give people the tools to be at a high level early on, and then they will be able to say, Your child needs a lot more work in this one area. So we’re gonna work with them. When a child is seven. Not when they’re 17.
Yeah. Not to, well, I do want to bring this up, actually. This is a question that I really wanted to ask. It might be coming out of nowhere, but I think growth mindset is something that we’re all probably tired of hearing about. I think that it’s a great thing. I love the whole idea of growth mindset, but I think that the problem with it is that we are working in a system that has fundamentally a fixed mindset, right?
Oh, yeah, right.
So it’s almost like the whole growth mindset thing when you think about how kids need a certain GPA for college, a certain standardized test scores, CCRPIscores at schools, grade levels, all of that. That’s a massive contradiction. To say, hey, teachers, teach growth mindset. But then the system operates with a fixed mindset mentality. What do you think about that? How do you handle that contradiction?
I’m a big fan of nuance. There’s very few things that are either all one thing or all the other. And growth mindset is one of those. Because the way that people talk about it is, it’s either all one or all the other. And I ended up, because we had to do stuff like that at school, and I ended up inventing a little chart where I broke down the different aspects of it, and they just needed to pick the box that you think you’re on for each category, and then look at the next box up, and that’s your goal.
I like that.
Which is like, people can handle that. It’s also a bit more specific. So the idea is to also sort of visually see, well, here’s where I am. I can go up one. Nobody’s asking me to go all the way to the top. I just need to go one step further. And that is good for me. The trick with that mathematically is the grades get in the way of that. I would love to be in a system where they say, Here’s where you are, here’s your improvement. Yay for you, but we still have to give everybody a what? An A, B, C, D, F grade?
Completely lacks nuance, right?
Yeah? Like, here’s me saying I just want you to improve that, but here’s also me saying, report cards are due or you need to pass, or you need to whatever. So it’s, it’s difficult, and just, I am not great with math. So if I’m sure that there’s a formula out there somewhere where I could somehow plug age, improvement, and translate that into a number between one and 100 so that does, I, there’s only so many hours, right?
Right.
Grade every single person’s work completely different? Because I would never get to go home.
No, you wouldn’t.
But I see that, and students see it, because what it does, also for higher achieving students, is it makes them risk avoidant. They might want to try something new, but they can’t because they’re afraid about tanking their GPA. Yes, and being young should be a time to explore new things or find new insights. Interests or try something different or way that they can’t like. In high school, I wanted to take art, but I didn’t, because the class was graded on skill, and I am not very skillful. I just…would it have helped me just to develop something totally different? Yeah, that’s why I didn’t take physics. Consequently, I don’t know anything about physics, which is…
What a tragedy. Because the world has missed out on Laura French, the artist.
Yeah, well, I would just be a bit better at drawing. Well, and I would understand levers and force and things like that. That make sense to other people.
But we stuck…we stuck…we stayed in our lane because we were so worried about GPA and things like that.
Yes, and I even did that in college because I didn’t know what I wanted to do. So I needed to have a high enough GPA that if I were trying to go to whatever grad school, that wouldn’t hurt me. And that’s a classic thing with them, because we talk about, we’ve been talking about lower achieving students, but that system that we’ve set up, it doesn’t reward learning or trying something new, it rewards going back over and over the thing that you’re good at, so that your grades are good.
Yes, it does. That is absolutely true. And so I think that that is one major issue with our system, and so I want to ask you now, what would you want policy makers to understand about what this pressure does to teachers? Because, oh, my goodness, it’s so frustrating to want to see our students grow, but either to watch the really high achievers not want to branch out for fear of getting a bad grade, and you know what we’ve spent so much time talking about, on the other end, students who we’re pressured to pass along because of things like CCRPI. So what does this pressure do to teachers?
Feels like you can’t win. My brother is a high school basketball coach, and he said one time, I cannot believe that my livelihood depends upon whether or not some 16 year olds can shoot.
Oh, my goodness, yes.
It’s weird that I’m responsible for a lot of things that I don’t have a lot of control over.
Yes.
And when you try to do things the right way, the system gets in the way instead of helping you, which is an entirely different discussion, like there’s plenty can we say? I mean, I love it when I have a parent who says, hold him accountable. He shouldn’t be doing this, or he should have been turning his work in, or x, y, z, is not acceptable, and then they follow through. That, because I feel like we’re on a team, and I just feel like sometimes, it feels like it’s the teacher who’s to take responsibility, not the kid, not the parent and the administration wants to go with whatever the parent wants, because it’s more of a customer service model, in some cases it feels like, but, yeah, there’s, but I think that would build a culture of accountability. Because, again, parents are like, well, she’s never gotten in trouble for not following the dress code before. Why now? Then they get mad. But if they’d have known since the beginning, that was the thing with consequences. It might stop. Obviously that’s not going to work all the time, because people are not widgets. Humans have free will, and they can be unpredictable.
The free will conundrum.
Yes, and then I think the other thing too is just, it’s just difficult. I was trying to think about what jobs are out there where people are trying to prevent you from doing your job while you’re doing it, and then…
Is there another one? Because that is literally what our job feels like a lot of the time.
It really does. I thought maybe, I thought maybe police officers, maybe prison wardens, maybe. But if you think about if a lawyer’s clients are frequently late to their appointments, or they skip them, you know, they schedule an appointment to see their lawyer and then they don’t show up. Does anyone say to that lawyer, I don’t think you’re very good at your job, because people are not coming to their appointments on time. Yeah, and then to the state licensing board. Well, this lawyer, x number of his clients, their attendance is poor, and then he gives them advice that they don’t follow. So what? This is a failing law practice? If you think about it in other terms, it just sounds absurd.
It does so. Why do you think we treat teachers that way? Why do we approach education from that angle?
Oh, gosh, I bet there’s lots of fairly embedded cultural and historical reasons for that. It could be a case of just people who are not on the ground making decisions. You said something earlier about, well, how would that play out? I can’t remember exactly how you put it, but I thought, what if implementers, well, not implementers, inventors, is that the word, of economic of well, it ultimately is economic policy, had to pass all the same tests that the kids have to take. So what if they all had to take the same test just to see what that is? What if all of them were required to be substitutes for a week in some district, not of their choosing? You would be randomly assigned to a number of different schools, different levels, so you actually see firsthand in it, not walking through for the dog and pony show, just, you know, Undercover Boss almost. Just go be a sub, try to make copies, try to deal with, you know, all the things that people deal with on a daily basis, and they may not change their minds about any of the policies, any of that, but it would still be an informed decision. Or a more informed decision.
Yeah. I think that I want to ask you one more question, and that, you know, you kind of answered it a little, but not fully, and that is what would accountability look like in a system designed by teachers? Because, you know, you just talked about making policy makers actually come to the school and take the tests and walk among the students and sit in classrooms as substitute teachers. But how would that, you know, how would our accountability system change if teachers designed it?
I think people who understand statistics a lot better than I do, we can figure out some kind of way early on to break down those very specific reading skills, figure out how for the teacher to identify mastery. Because if you ask a child’s teacher, especially in a situation where they have the same kid in the same room all day, all year long. They know what those kids can do and they can’t do.
That is so true.
They’ve been working with them all year, and so they can, they could tell you, I mean, this is what they tell parents when they meet with them–that he’s struggling with this thing. Shouldn’t so we say, Okay, here’s a strength, there’s this deficit, and then work with them on the deficits, develop the strengths, and then circle back to it. That’s essentially what a report card is supposed to be. But often that’s more a reflection of work ethic, and there isn’t really anything wrong with that. I mean, honestly, if nobody had ever made me do math, and if I wasn’t worried about my math credit, I probably wouldn’t have learned any of it because I disliked it so much.
Right.
So there should still be some kind of measure like that. They tried to do it in Kentucky. Long story short, there was a lot of inequality in Kentucky’s educational system for a lot of reasons, much of it having to do with property taxes and the extreme poverty of some areas. So when they were working on improving the testing situation, they really went to a lot of effort to try to be more creative in how they evaluated people. And there were some hits and misses that they were trying. So the pilot was when I was in high school, and by the time I was teaching, they kept elements and gotten rid of certain elements, but something that a student worked on was a writing portfolio. And they were different types of writing that followed them throughout high school, so they would work on different pieces–but then get this–on paper in an actual folder.
What? No.
Yeah, and their teacher the next year would get that portfolio so they could read through it, get a sense of their skill. They would edit items that they’d already written. And a number of us, yeah, we’ll just write something one time and that’s it. But if you figure any person serious in their career, if something’s important, they’re not gonna just write it and not edit. If you care about the quality of something. So there were certain pieces they were allowed to edit. And when in order to graduate, you needed to have the equivalent of at least 50% which is actually not terrible, considering you had, you got to spend all of high school editing those pieces. One was a letter to the reviewer reflecting on your writing. One was a personal narrative. And there were three wild cards, two of which had to come from a class outside of English. Could be a lab report, could be a history paper, could be–it could be something from, I think they even allowed, like recipes or things from classes, but it was writing outside of English class. But what I liked about it was that wherever it was, you were. It was the idea of constant improvement. You wrote this thing last year. Do you want to expand on it? You want to make it better? We can make it better. You don’t have to use it in the one that you turn in when you’re a senior. But I’m gonna agree with you. We gave kids grades for things that they’d already written that they worked to improve. Somebody, a friend of mine, went to a college in New Jersey, and she was told that students from Kentucky that they got knew how to write.
Wow, that’s so–I like that system. I like that idea a lot.
Yes, yeah. And we, the English teacher, scored it, but we had to be officially trained every year, but they paid for us for a sub, for two days. Two different people had to read it.
Oh, wait, you got a sub that they paid for and they paid you to train? You didn’t have to do it on your own time? That’s amazing.
Yeah, you didn’t just mail them off to the state. Now, we had to stop periodically and calibrate, just to make sure that we were all scoring. If two people agreed on the portfolio score, it would stay. But if two people disagreed, it went to a third person, and it was four levels you just needed. I think, I think it was the basic, you know, beginner, proficient, whatever. And I think that they don’t do that anymore to that extent, because time and money. It’s a lot easier and faster to fill in bubbles or to write a paragraph that a computer can score, but it taught the process, and the whole idea was just continuous improvement, and it was interdisciplinary, because they had to have stuff from other classes that they could also edit. But I feel like that is a good example of their taking responsibility for their learning. The teacher is also responsible for helping them with their learning. And their letter to the reviewer? Part of that is reflecting on their improvement. And so part of what that included was, okay, I wrote this thing, and here’s how I made it better. Here’s what I learned in that process. And that’s ideally what we’re supposed to be doing. Now, if somebody in a system continually fails, then yeah, they need some interventions. But maybe we don’t know somebody needs an intervention if we keep giving them 70s and sending them into the next grade.
Oh, yeah, Laura, I want to thank you for…
Thank you.
Sharing Danny’s story and your story and your law. I love it. I am going to elect you, I’ll vote for you when you run for school board. Yes. And for listeners who want to think a little more about this, what’s one thing they can do in their own classrooms, or schools?
Wow, because there’s a number of things in teaching you don’t know what, if it works or not, because you can’t crawl inside somebody’s head and then know whether or not it was helpful to them. But I do think perhaps just encouraging people to focusing on the getting better, or let’s find something that will work to help you focus. Maybe because they all want to graduate, but that feels like a really long time from now. So what is something that we’re gonna–okay–you want to work on cars? You want to run your own business? You need to be able to write well enough that you look like you know what you’re doing–that banks want to give you money for your–they want to give you a business loan. Because I kind of feel in this situation, sort of powerless about accountability. I mean, I do yammer a lot about if you don’t pay your electric bill on time, there will be a penalty. It’s a late fee. That’s, I describe the penalty that comes out of something, an assignment they turn in late I’m like, that’s your late fee. And and then if you never pay your light bill, then they’re getting turned off.
That’s true.
The real world does have consequences, which is why we’re supposed to be helping them with this. And so I guess the fact that I keep nagging them about analogous situations in life. Is my principal gonna want to keep me if I roll in late? Whatever we can grab onto. Let’s just do that, I guess.
That sounds good. I like the analogies that you tell. They they clarify things for me. I’m sure they do for your students, too. Thank you so much for being on the show today, Laura, and it’s so you were great to talk to you.
Oh, absolutely. Same here.
I hope this conversation hit home for you like it did for me. Laura nailed something so many of us feel but struggle to articulate. I know, at least I do, how policies with good intentions can create impossible situations for teachers and devastating outcomes for students. She’s spot on about the impact of school report cards like CCRPI–the intent might be accountability, but the reality has been passing students through the system. Instead of ensuring they’re actually learning, we’re graduating students who are ill equipped to read, write, and navigate this complex world. What if we actually practice the growth mindset that we preach? What if we measured real learning instead of just checking graduation boxes? If Laura’s story resonates with you, or if you have your own teacher law you’d like to discuss on the show, visit leahcleary.com/guest-form. I’d love to hear from you.