About the Master Class
It may sound odd to say that accountability has an anatomy, but it does, and understanding it allows the power of a true accountability to help drive an organization to greatness. The challenge in education is that we have long ignored that anatomy and attempted something else that is so far removed it can’t even be called accountability. This master class will explain the basics of the anatomy and how can you take advantage of it starting today.
Learning Outcomes
- The basics of accountability anatomy will be understood such that applications of that understanding can be applied immediately.
- The current school accountability will be seen for what it is, which is not about helping all schools take steps towards greatness.
- Understanding the contribution of high stakes testing to the issue, which while not actually the dominant issue, is necessary to creating a path forward.
About John Tanner, Executive Director of Test Sense
John Tanner is an educational writer and thought leader committed to true educational accountability. In his book, The Pitfalls of Reform, John shows with remarkable clarity that such a thing does not now exist. What does exist is a system is a system that produces an extraordinary number of false judgments that if acted on weaken schools and harm the students they serve. The result is a false narrative that schools are trapped in a cycle of failure, with the poorest, most vulnerable of our students experiencing the greatest amount of harm.
John has long believed that accountability should be to students, their parents, and the communities they come from, not to a state for high or rising test scores that don’t mean what the world believes. His time and effort are dedicated to finding and putting in place what he calls True Accountability. True Accountability begins with the question: “what are your hopes and dreams for your children?” and ends with, “how did we do?” Three years ago, True Accountability as a formal system was still just a theory but is at this moment becoming an actual practice in multiple states. John’s long-term goal of helping restore the social contract between a community and its schools is on its way to becoming a reality.
John has served as a state test director, an executive at a leading test publisher, and the director of accountability efforts for one of the leading educational organizations in the country. He is the Executive Director of Test Sense, a small educational consulting firm that works directly with schools and districts on True Accountability issues, and the Co-Director of the Texas Public Accountability Consortium, a project in which more than fifty school districts have joined forces to build a community-focused accountability system for their schools. John lives in San Antonio, TX.
John has long believed that accountability should be to students, their parents, and the communities they come from, not to a state for high or rising test scores that don’t mean what the world believes. His time and effort are dedicated to finding and putting in place what he calls True Accountability. True Accountability begins with the question: “what are your hopes and dreams for your children?” and ends with, “how did we do?” Three years ago, True Accountability as a formal system was still just a theory but is at this moment becoming an actual practice in multiple states. John’s long-term goal of helping restore the social contract between a community and its schools is on its way to becoming a reality.
John has served as a state test director, an executive at a leading test publisher, and the director of accountability efforts for one of the leading educational organizations in the country. He is the Executive Director of Test Sense, a small educational consulting firm that works directly with schools and districts on True Accountability issues, and the Co-Director of the Texas Public Accountability Consortium, a project in which more than fifty school districts have joined forces to build a community-focused accountability system for their schools. John lives in San Antonio, TX.
