Learning is a partnership

"... learning is a partnership between teachers, parents and students.  If any one of them is derelict, the entire process is fatally undermined."

Walt Gardner - Reality Check - "Students' Role in Learning"

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/walt_gardners_reality_check/2014/02/students_role_in_learning.html

Walt's comment sums up much of our concern about educational accountability in the last four decades.  What jumps out at me is his use of the word "derelict".  That's an extremely strong word.  It has been a large part of our work as a society on the roles of teacher and/or school accountability.

It is much less a part of our work on parent accountability.  And it's rarely a part of our work on student accountability, because we rarely hold students accountable.

Many students need to be held more accountable for their own learning.  Many students who do not reach their academic potential do not have mitigating factors that prevent them from achieving, they're simply lazy.  Lighting a fire under them should begin with lighting a fire under their parents.  We'll discuss the challenges of that endeavor on another day.  But many students, as Gardner points out, do have significant mitigating factors. 

They do not have: safe places to live, play, and sleep; nutritious meals to sustain their bodies and minds; quiet places to study or parents that encourage them and assist them.  These are all factors that come from a life of poverty.  Whether it comes from our altruistic intentions to help, our politically motivated agendas, our own lack of a reality check, or our own self-interest; as a society we ignore those mitigating factors at our own peril.

Geoffrey Canada, CEO of Harlem Children’s Zone, understands this.  His school addresses the whole child and has helped to “close the black-white achievement gap in most educational categories”* because of this holistic approach.  We could learn a great deal from his philosophy of serving both the child, the parent, and the culture. 

We do ourselves and our students no favors, when we focus solely upon academic achievement and ignore the whole child.