Truthfully, it need not be much. Schools and districts that engage in this work find that an  hour or so a week is more than sufficient. For those who just want to learn, it can be less than that.

In education we are accustomed to thinking about accountability as a six-ton elephant, when it always should have been a tool in the service a leader. Learning to do accountability right is anything put a six-ton elephant.

And finally, if all you have time to do is observe, that will be a contribution in and of itself. We will constantly be sending emails, updates, and announcements to keep you abreast of efforts and progress. Your knowledge that something better is possible will go a long ways towards making it so.

No. Lots of schools are prohibited from lobbying or joining anything partisan, so we explicitly won't engage in that way.

This is an effort to get something right in schools independent of politics. That isn't to say that we won't favor politicians willing to support public education, but we aren't going to campaign for them or hire lobbyists. We're here to create a solution to a problem that Texans of all stripes will find valuable.

Absolutely. Accountability is one of the most misunderstood components of education. Understanding how to do it well is the responsibility of everyone who cares about public education, so that we all have a sense of what something better looks like.

Having a Common Shared Vocabulary is the foundation of trust and understanding. The better we develop that vocabulary in all of us, the sooner we'll get to real solutions.

Accountability should never have been limited to what policy makers could write into legislation. It is instead a discipline of leadership, and a way of thinking about what matters that applies to every aspect of education. The sooner every educator learns that, the better.

But more importantly for teachers is that empowering effect this has. As a teacher you have more knowledge as to what each student needs than anyone else. This creates the space for you to act on that knowledge and then insists that you do.

The outcome will be thousands of Texas educators with a clear sense of what a great accountability environment will look like for Texas schools and a common shared vocabulary. Once we get there we'll be like other professions, capable of participating in and even controlling the way we account for what happens in our schools. The goal is then to be invited to the conversations on school accountability because we've got something to offer.

Not at all. Most of what matters in a student's life cannot be measured, but it can all be observed. Limiting our accountings to what can be measured or compared was always a mistake. Now we all have a chance to get past that.

That isn't to say better tests and ways to use them aren't valuable. Rather, that accountability for what matters is so much bigger than any test. 

This is indeed a challenge, but one we've learned to address. Policy makers are focused on standardized test scores that by design, can show patterns among students based on the entirety of an academic domain.

But the temptation exists, given the judgments that emerge, to restrict the domain to what is tested. That will have the eventual effect of freezing the results, which creates more negative judgments, which increases the temptation to teach to the test, which further freezes results, and on and on it goes.

The way you beat that system is to move the test score needle. The only way to do that sustainably is to teach the domain as deeply and richly as possible, always meeting the students where they happen to be.

Being viewed as "successful" in the current system doesn't mean much, and certainly doesn't validate a bad system, but it can create the spaces in which to figure out what a great accountability could look like.

Beating the current system is most likely to happen when you take the stance that you'll always do what is best for each child. That's how you can live within the current system while working towards something better.

One of my favorite things about being truly accountable is that you don't need permission or a policy to do it. Imagine walking into a leader's office or a board meeting and saying, "I found a way to be crystal clear regarding our work in a way that can be easily understood by everyone. Can I share that with you?" The answer will be "yes" every time.

Accountability is first and foremost a discipline of leadership, and second, a system. The system needs to be derived from the discipline and not the other way around.

Here is something else to consider: most other professions don't have systems and yet have rich and highly effective accountabilities. Given their role in society, schools will always need to have accountability systems, but the more practitioners of real accountability we have, the more likely any resulting system is to be great.

If you feel alone in wanting to do this, then it really is for you, because you'll have a network along for the ride.

Because accountability was never supposed to be a job. It was never supposed to function as a dictator regarding your work. It was never supposed to take more than a few hours a week.

Accountability is how you account for your work. It is the art of being responsible, answerable, and understood. Those are skills anyone can learn and put into practice.

Furthermore, the underlying accountability frameworks are universal, existing in every profession, which means you'e already experienced them, just not in education.

This isn't overwhelming because all you really need is to learn to apply things you already know in a new context, and master the resulting frameworks. That is a much lighter lift than what all of us are accustomed to thinking of when we hear the word accountability.