We’ve always known school accountability was broken.
We also knew fixing it would take courage, commitment — and a plan.
At bravEd, we’re convening a mission-driven network of school leaders to rethink the formal, top-down accountability structures that for years have discouraged innovation and turned our stakeholders into liabilities in favor of a new model of school performance built on research, collaboration and a mutual foundation of trust.
Our Benefits-Based Accountability™ Framework invites forward-thinking school leaders to participate in a burgeoning national movement that puts parents and students at the center of our work, provides a replicable process for developing and applying an entirely new, more compassionate system of school accountability and offers coaching, resources and tactical support to move your district from concept to a functioning, sustainable and truly transformative system in months, not years.
Experience this work as part of a cohort with other districts, or take it on yourself, with a full district-wide implementation.
To learn more, watch the short five-minute video below, or go here.
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I’m glad you’re here.
For more than 30 years, I have conducted research and written books on the topic of accountability. I’ve worked with hundreds of school districts in nearly every state, advised corporations and nonprofits. No matter where I go, my work always brings me back to the classroom — and to one essential question: why are we intent on making this work so hard?
Our schools are in crisis. Yet, as leaders, we inexplicably cling to the same broken systems and metrics that have been holding us back for the last 30 years.
It’s crazy. And it stops today.
Our Benefits-Based Accountability™ Framework was created to help school leaders rethink the very definition of school performance. Rather than anchor our evaluations in outdated compliance-based models, we’ve endeavored to create a benefits-based system that encourages innovation and invites change, evolving in lockstep with the shifting dynamics of our schools and their communities.
At bravEd our mission is simple: to have the courage to rebuild the system one school and conversation at a time. We cannot offer learning experiences that change the world, unless we are prepared to hold ourselves accountable and prepared to empower our stakeholders to do exactly that.
I sincerely hope you’ll consider joining me and our ever-growing network of school district partners in this bold and necessary work.
If you’re interested in learning more about our system and how it’s different, I’d be happy to walk you through the process and show you what other districts like yours are doing. Simply drop me a note by clicking the button below. Our regional cohorts and district-wide implementation models are filling up fast and we couldn’t be more excited to welcome you into the work.
I hope to hear from you.
Effective accountability systems are surprisingly easy to observe in effective organizations of all kinds. Unfortunately for schools, those leading the school reform agenda chose to follow a different path, one that uses all the right words but that opted for tools and systems that are incapable of achieving any of the policy goals they envision. The reason for this can be compared to selecting a jackhammer to do the work of a needle: it would be the wrong tool for the job.
John Tanner has spent well over a decade researching and exploring what a meaningful educational accountability could look like. His findings are profound and simple: effective organizations of all types follow the same underlying formula when it comes to their organizational accountabilities, which is not the accountability schools currently use. Furthermore, the accountability structure assigned to schools was designed for an entirely different purpose, and excellence, organizational effectiveness, innovation, equity, and quality are not in that purpose. The fact is that the harder schools work within the current system the less likely they are to meet the needs of the students they serve.
What makes this book and its content accessible to a wide audience is that Tanner takes the voice of a high school principal guiding her team through the process of converting to a True Accountability system. That voice is an amalgam of thousands of conversations with and among educators doing the work, and as such is intended to make the process both clear and meaningful. Newton High is a fictional high school, but every dialogue that takes place there has occurred multiple times in real life.
Finally solving the school accountability conundrum is long overdue. With the publication of The Accountability Mindset, solving one of the most pressing problems in education is now that much closer to being a reality.
