Rich: Make students accountable for more than grades, test scores

By Dorothy Rich
We talk about teacher and parent accountability. But what about the accountability that students have for their own education? Adults can teach our students and teach and teach them, but it’s the children who have to do the learning.

When we ask what students are accountable for, answers include, "get the top test scores," "make all A’s," " get into a good college." And those messages begin in the elementary grades.

This is too narrow a version of education: It’s choking the learning life out of a lot of kids.

If we really cared about education, we would expand our thinking about the educational process. No matter how good our classrooms are, students have to want to learn and to take responsibility for their learning.