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Encouragement is very important when assigning any type of assignment. Motivate students to want to work together in order to complete a certain task.

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Communication is key to any group work or involvement. It is crucial to speak up and be herd in a group or one might have regret

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Allow plenty of time to complete an assignment. Make sure everyone is clear on the due date so that one person is not stuck with completing the assignment by themselves because others are not available

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Alfonzo Porter is a contributor to The RootDC and the author of "More Like Barack, Less Like Tupac: Eradicating the Academic Achievement Gap by Countering Decades of the Hip Hop Hoax." He is a speaker, consultant, former teacher and school administrator.

Although teachers and schools are held accountable for outcomes, many argue that it is time to hold parents responsible, too. The days of parents adopting a hands-off, "it's the teacher's job" approach to their child's education are quickly coming to an end.

But where is the real action? We all nod when school officials such as Prince George's County school system spokesman Briant Coleman toe the official line, as he did when he told me: "Education is a three-way street between teachers, students and parents. None of us can do it alone. Studies show that children with involved parents tend to do better in school. That is why we work at all levels to find ways to bring parents into the classroom and draw them into their child's education."

But former Prince George's teacher LaQuane Smith says schools apparently still don't get it.

"These kinds of statements miss the point," Smith said of Coleman's view. "Everybody agrees with it, but what are we going to do about the real problem of parental apathy?"

Some states are advocating measures such as parent report cards, mandatory parent service hours in schools, home visits to evaluate a child's school readiness and even jail time for parents who are determined to be neglectful of their child's schooling.

For example, in Florida, a Republican state lawmaker is pushing legislation aimed at grading parent participation. In Detroit, the Wayne County prosecutor recently sought an ordinance that would put parents behind bars for three days for educational neglect. On Capitol Hill, Rep. Danny K. Davis (D-Ill.) sponsored the Education Begins at Home Act several years ago, which calls for home visits to assess a child's preparedness for school.

With the start of the school year less than a month away in some jurisdictions, the focus on student achievement could well pivot from teacher to parent.

For some parents, the idea of teachers providing this type of feedback is a step in the right direction. Dupree Allen, a father of two children who attend Walker-Jones Educational Campus in the District, says parent report cards might be a good idea.

"I would love to know where I stand," Allen said. "If my child's school assigned a failing parent grade to me, it would tell me that I need to communicate more effectively with my kids' teachers."

Allen says that his son, Preonta Costly, 12, and daughter, Capria Costly, 10, are good students but that as a parent, he would like to hear more from the school as to how he might do a better job.

"I would even take it a step further and ask that parents who receive a needs improvement over successive quarters be required to volunteer at his/her child's school," he said.

In some cases, however, school systems seem to be going in the opposite direction. Several states, for instance, have passed so-called parent-trigger laws, which would allow parents to petition to remove staff members from failing schools; call for student surveys that give children a voice in assessing teacher performance; and require teacher applicants to audition for jobs. (Maryland has flirted with a parent-trigger law).

But these efforts ignore that there is no shortage of programs aimed at helping struggling students achieve. In most cases, phenomenal programs designed to help kids often die on the vine because of lack of participation.

For example, as part of the federal Title I program, there are more than 2.2 million slots for children to receive free tutoring help. Yet according to the Education Industry Association, only 400,000, or just over 18 percent, of these opportunities are used. The much-needed funding reverts back to school systems' operating budgets.

Even worse, some parents expect gifts from tutoring companies for signing up their child for free services. Computers, iPods, amusement park tickets, video games and the like are not unusual recruitment bribes. Companies are openly told to provide for incentives in their service budgets. So, a program can quickly cease to be about helping the student but rather might determine which company will give the best "stuff" for signing up.

Too many parents are dropping the ball. We fool ourselves into thinking that more exacting methods of evaluating teachers alone can pull our nation out of its 30-year academic decline. Teachers don't have a magic wand that will undo the neglect of homes that not only fail to support the schools but often demonstrate hostility toward their efforts.

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Time for more parent accountability in nation's schools

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Alfonzo Porter is a contributor to The RootDC and the author of "More Like Barack, Less Like Tupac: Eradicating the Academic Achievement Gap by Countering Decades of the Hip Hop Hoax." He is a speaker, consultant, former teacher and school administrator.

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Commentary

Professional accountability merits more attention

"Accountability" has become a four-letter word to many educators, who are frustrated with steadily increasing consequences attached to student test scores. A year ago, responding in part to growing dissatisfaction with accountability in the form of high-stakes testing, Congress jettisoned the much-maligned No Child Left Behind Act after 14 years. The new Every Student Succeeds Act continues testing requirements, but now allows states to determine consequences attached to the results.

States are now working on accountability plans to conform to the new law, and most states will reduce the influence of tests. But lowering the stakes of tests need not-and should not-mean reducing accountability. Instead, policymakers and educators should take advantage of the opportunity to create richer and more constructive systems for evaluating and supporting those who are educating our nation's children.

Accountability need not be defined exclusively as high-stakes testing. Outside of education policy, accountability means more than just attaching consequences to outcomes. Markets make firms accountable through customers' ability to choose competitors; reviewers make restaurants accountable by publicizing their ratings; medical rounds make doctors accountable to their colleagues by requiring explanations of treatment.

For several decades, experimental psychologists and behavioral economists have examined various forms of accountability that can have either positive or negative effects in different circumstances. In a paper published in the journal Behavioral Science and Policy this past fall, we reviewed this literature and applied it to education, concluding that policymakers should use multiple accountability tools in tandem to promote continuous improvement in school performance.

To be sure, multiple studies have found that students can benefit from high-stakes testing policies. But the behavioral science literature shows many unintended negative effects of outcome-based accountability, some of which have been evident in schools: narrowing the curriculum, teaching to the test, and even cheating. Other forms of accountability are needed to temper these negative effects.

In particular, professional accountability has historically been neglected as a tool for school improvement. It merits more attention. Medical rounds, for example, create such accountability for doctors through standards of practice, observation of practice, identification of exemplary practice, and, most importantly, feedback to improve practice.

Principals have long observed teachers once or twice a year, but these occasions have typically been dog-and-pony shows, with little useful feedback to teachers, upwards of 98 percent of whom are deemed "satisfactory," according to a 2009 report from the teacher-workforce group TNTP. Fortunately, ambitious schools and districts across the country are trying to reimagine professional accountability. Observation rubrics are being redesigned with the aim of making them more helpful to teachers. Expert teachers are being hired as instructional coaches to provide one-on-one support. In New York City's high-performing The Equity Project (TEP) Charter School, teachers are routinely expected to observe and be observed by their colleagues-not once or twice a year, but twice every week.

Indeed, one of the lessons we found in behavioral science is that observation alone can create accountability, even without formal consequences. The laboratory literature finds many instances in which accountability produces powerful effects on behavior through mechanisms as simple as the "identifiability" of the individual actor, an expectation that actions must be explained, and the mere presence of an observer.

Transparency of practice permits professional accountability. Schools like Kansas City's Kauffman Charter School in Missouri are creating literal transparency by putting interior windows on classrooms. But others remain bound by rules that reject transparency, such as the Chicago public schools' blanket prohibition of any use of classroom video in teacher evaluations. Professional accountability means that teachers cannot close their doors and teach any way they please.

Nor should professional accountability apply only to teachers. Tools like the Vanderbilt Assessment of Leadership in Education create professional accountability for school leaders, by giving teachers input on the evaluation of their principals, in a 360-style approach that is common in the business world through incorporating input from supervisors, subordinates, peers, and oneself.

Some schools are also recognizing that professional accountability involves client input. Pittsburgh is among the school districts now using student surveys to inform evaluations of educators, just as is routinely done at the college level. The results of those surveys predict how much students learn in class. Students can distinguish the teachers who are challenging them to learn from those who are not.

Differentiating performance is a hallmark of professional accountability. President Obama's Department of Education may have been overzealous in seeking to evaluate teachers based on test scores, but its support for ratings scales that recognize exceptional teachers was on the mark. Los Angeles recently took a step in the wrong direction when, in an agreement with the local teachers' union, it eliminated the top category of performance. As a result, the district will again become an inverted Lake Wobegon in which all teachers are satisfactory and none are above average. This is belied not only by reams of research but also by what every parent knows to be true: Some teachers are exceptional. They should be recognized-and their colleagues should be learning from them.

As policymakers and educators take advantage of the federal Every Student Succeeds Act's new flexibility, we hope they keep these facts in mind: First, reducing a near-exclusive reliance on test-based accountability does not have to mean reducing accountability as a whole. Second, a wide range of tools are available for creating a richer accountability system that promotes continuous improvement. And third, professional accountability should play an important role, raising expectations for teachers and schools while providing support to meet those raised expectations.

Published in Print: January 25, 2017, as Accountability Should Add Up to More Than Test Scores

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Here's What Works for Teacher Accountability

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Commentary "Accountability" has become a four-letter word to many educators, who are frustrated with steadily increasing consequences attached to student test scores. A year ago, responding in part to growing dissatisfaction with accountability in the form of high-stakes testing, Congress jettisoned the much-maligned No Child Left Behind Act after 14 years.

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Administration for Children and Families (ACF)

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“Real World” Class Jobs: Sharing Responsibility in the Classroom (Virtual Tour)

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Students complete applications and performance reviews to obtain and keep classroom jobs that match their skills and interests.

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Active Learning Classrooms: Sharing responsibility for learning

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Exploring the principles, theory, practice and development of work with groups

What is a group? We explore what a group is - and some key dimensions of groups.

What is groupwork? Just what does the process of working with a group involve?

the development of group work

The early history of group work. We examine the emergence of group work in British work with young people and adults during the nineteenth century.

Social group work: formulation of a method, 1920-1936. Kenneth E. Reid explores a pivotal time in the development of the theory and practice of working with groups within social work.

Group work - expansion and professionalism, 1937 - 1955. Kenneth E. Reid explores how group work was increasingly presented as part of social work (as against informal education and recreation) and the fascinating process of delineating its boundaries.

Robert Freed Bales, group observation and interaction processes. R. F. Bales pioneered the development of systematic methods of group observation and measurement of interaction processes. In this brief article we survey his contribution.

Grace Coyle and group work principles, theory and practice. Grace Coyle made an extraordinary contribution to our understanding of group work principles, theory and practice. She was also an important advocate for the work within US social work and an innovatory trainer.

George C. Homans, the human group and elementary social behaviour. George Caspar Homans (1910-1989) is widely regarded as the father of social exchange theory. Two of his many books, The Human Group and Social Behaviour: Its Elementary Forms are considered world-classics in sociology. He also made significant empirical and conceptual contributions to small-group research. In this piece A. Javier Treviño explores Homans' lasting contribution.

Josephine Klein, group work, youth work and exploring English cultures. Josephine Klein was one of the first British-based practitioners to explore group process and working with groups systematically. She also went on to complete a landmark study of family and community life and develop before becoming a psychotherapist. We explore her contribution.

Gisela Konopka and group work. Gisela Konopka (1910-2003) made a profound contribution to the development of social group work and the deepening of practice with children and young people. In this paper Janice Andrews charts Gisela Konopka's life and assesses her work.

Kurt Lewin, group dynamics and action learning: A seminal theorist who deepened our understanding of groups, experiential learning, and action research.

Carl Rogers, core conditions and education. Best known for his contribution to client-centered therapy and his role in the development of counselling, Rogers also had much to say about the principles, theory and practice of education and group work.

Bruce W. Tuckman - forming, storming, norming and performing in groups. Bruce W. Tuckman produced one of the most quoted models of group development in the 1960s. We consider his contribution and the model's continuing use.

Gertrude Wilson and social group work theory and practice. Gertrude Wilson was a pivotal figure in the development of the principles, theory and practice of group work during the 1940s and 1950s. Here we briefly assess her contribution.

concepts

Animation. Animation introduced. Animation, formation and education explored. The development of practice.

Association. The nature of association and its educational potential explored plus an annotated list of key texts.

Conversation and dialogue. Dialogue', Freire says, 'is the encounter between men, mediated by the world, in order to name the world'. Here we explore this idea - and its roots.

Experiential learning. David A. Kolb's model of experiential learning can be found in many discussions of the theory and practice of adult education, informal education and lifelong learning. We set out the model, and examine its possibilities and problems.

Evaluation. Evaluation is part and parcel of educating - yet it can be experienced as a burden and an unnecessary intrusion. We explore the theory and practice of evaluation and some of the key issues for informal and community educators, social pedagogues youth workers and others. In particular, we examine educators as connoisseurs and critics, and the way in which they can deepen their theory base and become researchers in practice.

Facilitating learning and change in groups. Just what is facilitation, and what does it involve? We explore the theory and practice of facilitation, and some key issues around facilitating group sessions.

Learning. What is learning? Is it a change in behaviour or understanding? Is it a process? Here we survey some common models.

Reflection. What constitutes reflection - and what significance does it have for educators? The contributions of Dewey, Schön and Boud et. al. assessed.

Self-direction. Many books and articles about lifelong learning talk glibly about self direction. Too often this idea is seen as unproblematic - an obvious good. But things are not quite as they seem.

Acknowledgement: Picture: Group work by Eldan Goldenberg. Sourced from Flcikr and reproduced under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0) licence. http://www.flickr.com/photos/eldan/4929258391/

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Group work principles, theory and practice

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What is a group? We explore what a group is - and some key dimensions of groups. What is groupwork? Just what does the process of working with a group involve? the development of group work The early history of group work.

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Learn about Google Drive's file sharing platform that provides a personal, secure cloud storage option to share content with other users.