All of the important policy conversations about how to best evaluate teachers are getting lost in the arguments over whom to blame. And this blame game is clearly the wrong way to frame this discussion. The result is that educators become instantly defensive and it becomes impossible to collectively devise a better teacher evaluation tool than we have today (almost non-existent in most places).

This culture of blame and defense is evident in the brouhaha in Los Angeles over teacher ratings being shared with the public. Many are spending their time highlighting the teachers who received bad ratings or complaining about the rating system. While these cynics blame and complain, others are choosing a better route: many teachers are hitting the LA Times website to check their own ratings and consider ways to get even better. Wise observers are asking why the district didn’t do more with these data to highlight the best teachers and help all teachers get even better.

This is not … and should not be … about blame (despite what the normally right-on but in this case way-off Bill Maher says below). Of course children are far more influenced by their parents than they are by their teachers. If my kids fail, I am going to look in the mirror and blame myself rather than any teacher. However, unless I am mistaken (and I am not mistaken, this is just a rhetorical device), our lawmakers use our collective taxpayer dollars to provide education for all kids who enter our schools. It is most certainly the job of our policymakers to carefully evaluate the effectiveness of all civil servants, including teachers.

And the data are clear that quality teachers can make a real difference in student learning. Indeed, much of what we learn from teacher evaluations is how wonderfully effective many of our teachers are. As a result, our policymakers, as thoughtful stewards of our public funds, have an obligation to evaluate the effectiveness of our teachers and to make use of these evaluations to improve the education provided to our children. This is not blame; this is accountability.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan said as much in Little Rock last week. However, after he received a tepid response when calling for accountability from educators, he pandered to the audience by saying: “”If it was up to me and the law allowed it, I would put out student attendance data and hold parents accountable.” This, sadly, received great applause.

Of course parents should be responsible, but it is not the duty of the schools to hold us accountable. Who’s footing the bill here? Who’s paying whom? As long as we citizens are paying the salaries of our civil servants, we have a right and a duty to hold our civil servants accountable … not the other way around!

In this case, I am sad to say, my always-entertaining friend Bill gets it wrong .. but have a listen and judge for yourself ….