The Benefits-Based Accountability Cohort
Our main offering, the Cohort experience is for any school or district with the need to finally get accountability right
How it works
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Teams from each participating campus and the central office are selected. Each member of each team registers on the bravEdWay Learning Portal so that they will have access to all materials, schedules, etc. The Portal will be our one-stop shop throughout the process.
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Each member of each team attends twenty monthly sessions over two years with John Tanner, founder of bravEd and the chief researcher behind Benefits-Based Accountability. John conducts each monthly session several times during its assigned month to ensure maximum attendance and participation. Sessions are recorded and made available for thirty days as a resource. The Year One Sessions are listed below.
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Each team carves out a thirty-minute weekly window during which they will conduct their system build. This will appear on the surface to be inadequate, but it is not. Accountability is not supposed to be our jobs, but rather, how we account for our efforts. That should be done in a highly efficient manner.
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Each participant will receive a copy of John's latest book, The Accountability Mindset, which will act as a companion volume to the work and as an additional resource.
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Starting in Year 2, Cohort members will be given access to the Benefits-Based Accountability Showcase. This is a series of virtual sessions in which colleagues from around the country share their stories and practices regarding their Benefits-Based Accountability Efforts, network, and work together towards an eventual policy change. More information on the Showcase can be found here.
Year One Sessions
1. Hopes & Dreams & Benefits
What does a real accountability look and feel like, and how will that benefits our students,parents, and communities?
4. Story Telling Machines
How do you account for your efforts such that you tell a truthful, fact-based story that is compelling to any audience that cares to look?
7. Testing
What would happen if someone asked a research instrument to play a role it was never designed to play? (Note: that is exactly what happened.)
10. Flipping the Org Chart
What would truly empower the teaching force as a profession? The answer: learning to account for what we do in ways that are easily understood and deeply meaningful.
2. Accountabilities
What makes and models of accountability exist, how do they work, and how do we use them properly?
5. For What and to Whom?
You can be accountability to the state for high or rising test scores, or to stakeholders for the educational benefits they expect for their children, but those are not the same things.
8: The Evidentiary Plan, Part II
Creating a compelling body of evidence is an art, one you'll learn to master quickly, much to the benefit of your students.
3. Accountability & Trust-Based Leadership
How can accountability fit into the broader topic of leadership such that it can be used as a tool and not a blunt instrument?
6. The Evidentiary Plan, Part I
How do we create evidentiary plans that the public can understand and engage in, even when the evidence is very difficult to understand or intrepret
9. Charting & Signaling
How can we possibly account for the efforts of an organization as complex as a school in a way that will be easy to understand for everyone? The answer is in charting and signaling.