Short on Power, Long on Responsibility

Professor Richard Ingersoll makes the case that, to improve teacher quality, schools need to go beyond holding teachers more accountable–by giving them more control.

In this 2007 ASCD Educational Leadership article, University of Pennsylvania Professor of Education and Sociology Richard Ingersoll explains that it won’t work to hold teachers accountable without giving them the ability to make decisions influencing the outcomes for which we seek accountability.

Experts in organizational management and leadership have long held that accountability and power must go hand in hand in workplaces. Increases in one must be accompanied by increases in the other. Changes in both accountability and power are necessary to accomplish the larger systemic goal—ensuring high-quality teachers for every classroom.

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Learning about teacher-powered schools