Chapter 1
Accountability Challenge
While the accountability movement pushes forward with considerable fanfare, behind the scenes multiple perspectives and conflicting agendas are clashing, with uncertain results.
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In November 1849, Levi Hubbard, clerk of school district number 5, Town of Sheboygan Falls (Wisconsin), noted in his record book:
Miss Margaret Ross commenced teaching the summer school & taught five weeks at $1.25 per week. She did not give general satisfaction & left the school.
School boards in 1849 didn't demand much of their teachers-good moral character, an orderly schoolhouse, slightly more knowledge than their students-but when they were disappointed, they didn't hesitate to act. Accountability was a simple matter: If the board judged that a teacher was not living up to expectations, it dismissed her.
This sort of accountability was viewed as purely a matter of individual responsibility, and if there was local gossip about the teacher's lapse, there was no great public outcry. School #5 found Margaret Ross's performance unsatisfactory and took what it considered appropriate action; the board would not have considered the possibility that schools or teachers in general were failing to live up to their responsibility to society.
Today, by contrast, educational accountability is at the center of a national debate that has raised fundamental questions about school effectiveness, institutional reform, and human motivation. State legislatures around the country are revamping educational policies, spending millions on new assessment systems, and redesigning compensation systems in an effort to ensure that schools deliver the promised results. Consider these news items:
• In Denver, teachers have agreed to pilot "pay for performance" salary schedules that link teacher compensation to student learning (Denver Public Schools).
• In Virginia, the state's new "Standards of Learning" are so rigorous that only 6.5 percent of public schools met the benchmarks on the second round of testing (Jessica Portner 1999).
• In Texas, schools whose students too often fail the licensing exam can lose their accreditation ("Accountability System for Educator Preparation").
• In Florida, students attending schools that flunk the state's report card (two Fs in four years) receive vouchers worth $4,000 to be used at any public or private school of their choice (Jessica Sandham).
• In Jefferson County, Colorado, school district officials are linking their request for additional tax funds to a promise to improve student performance. For a $25 million annual increase, the district will guarantee a 25 percent improvement in reading and math scores in two years (June Kronholtz 1999).
These examples-unimaginable just a decade ago-suggest that policymakers have at last gotten serious about accountability, and that school leaders face a changed landscape of public expectations. Whereas it was once sufficient to run an orderly, well-organized school with qualified teachers and up-to-date curriculum, it now appears as though results will be the universal yardstick of leadership.
A closer look, however, reveals a more ambiguous picture. Whereas all states have mandated testing, and forty-eight publish school or district "report cards," only eighteen link graduation to test results, only twenty offer schools monetary incentives for good performance, and just one ties teacher evaluation to student performance (Ulrich Boser). Even as they try to wrestle their schools into compliance with the new policies, leaders may find it hard to stifle some nagging doubts. Are policymakers serious about accountability? Will they stay the course when the hard decisions have to be made?
Moreover, school leaders serve more than one master, and "accountability" carries different meanings for different stakeholders. When directly asked, "Should schools be more accountable?" virtually everyone reflexively responds, "Of course," but their visions may differ.
For policymakers, accountability usually seems to mean that students perform well on tests. For teachers, it is often defined as working hard to meet the needs of students. For parents, it may mean simply that their wishes are listened to. For some educational critics, it means that if students are going to be held to higher standards, the public should provide the resources that give all students an equal opportunity to learn. Thus, while the accountability movement pushes forward with considerable fanfare, behind the scenes multiple perspectives and conflicting agendas are clashing, with uncertain results.
The Many Faces of Accountability
At the most basic level, accountability is an "accounting," a way of explaining one's actions to those who have a right to the explanation (Robert Wagner 1989). The prototype is the Biblical parable of the talents, in which three servants are entrusted with the care of their master's money. Upon the return of the master, each is called upon to explain what he has done with the money. The two who invested the money and earned a profit are praised and amply rewarded. The third, knowing the master to be a hard man, has declined to take any risks and simply buried the money. For this he is soundly condemned.
What is not clear in the parable is whether the third servant is being chastised because of his play-it-safe philosophy or because he failed to turn a profit. In the same way, policymakers have often wavered between two definitions of accountability. In the traditional "input model," educators are considered responsible for following professional standards and best practices. For example, most accreditation protocols examine whether schools follow generally accepted practices; if they hire qualified teachers, provide adequate libraries, and have a well-defined curriculum, they gain approval. The more recent "output model" pays little attention to inputs and demands results; educators are promised autonomy in their practice but in return must deliver improved student achievement.
In addition to these contrasting perspectives, schools operate in a complex governance system in which accountability is demanded at different times in different ways by different participants. Linda Darling-Hammond (1989) has identified at least five variants: political, legal, bureaucratic, professional, and market accountability.
Political Accountability
Schools are public institutions in a democratic society, required to subject policy decisions to public scrutiny and electoral discipline. Legislators and board members, knowing that their continued tenure depends on public satisfaction, have an incentive to respond to the wishes of voters. Much of the current push for accountability has been generated by political processes.
However, in a representative system, political accountability is a blunt instrument at best. Voters can only pass judgment on the politician's record as a whole, and a vote for a candidate cannot be easily attributed to his or her stand on a particular issue. Between elections, policymakers have to rely on polling, informal discussions, and the daily mail to determine how voters feel about any issue.
In addition, political accountability is based on constituents' wishes, which are not always directly linked to demands for student achievement or professional standards. For example, despite their desire for higher standards, parents sometimes resist efforts to increase the amount of homework their children are assigned (Romesh Ratnesar). Voter opinion, even when strongly expressed, does not always add up to a coherent program.
Legal Accountability
Schools have certain legal obligations, and citizens with complaints can petition courts to intercede on their behalf. Issues involving equal opportunity, discrimination, or special education have increasingly been resolved in this way. However, most courts have shied away from adjudicating instructional accountability. For example, lawsuits built around "educational malpractice" (such as failure to teach a student to read) have been received coldly by judges reluctant to substitute their judgment for that of professional educators. For the most part, legal accountability merely establishes a framework of acceptable practices within which schools must work.
Bureaucratic Accountability
Because policymakers tend to be remote from classrooms, most public institutions have turned to some form of bureaucracy to ensure that desirable practices are followed. State and district offices translate the wishes of legislators into policy and issue rules that educators are expected to follow. This has been the most visible form of educational accountability; a look at any state's administrative code will turn up dozens or even hundreds of specific policies to which schools are held accountable. The combination of rule setting and enforcement provides assurance to the public that schools are operating in acceptable ways.
Bureaucratic accountability assumes, however, that students will uniformly benefit from the establishment and enforcement of standardized one-size-fits-all policies-an idea that seems increasingly out of tune with today's diverse school populations. Moreover, traditional bureaucratic accountability focuses on practices rather than products. Teachers who submit a lesson plan of the required form have done their duty according to the system-even if students fail to learn.
Professional Accountability
Professional accountability focuses on practices that are client-oriented and knowledge-based. It assumes that certain "best practices" (learnable from research and reflective teaching) form the basis of professional responsibility. But because students are so diverse, these practices must be modified and attuned to the needs of individual students. Professional accountability thus operates on the local level, where individual practitioners determine what they owe students, practice their craft, and then judge the results.
For this type of accountability to work, teachers must be well trained, knowledgeable, and dedicated to students; if not, their practice will be idiosyncratic rather than consistent with professional principles. Most important, professional accountability focuses on the teacher's responsibility to students rather than to policymakers. Adherence to standardized bureaucratic rules frequently clashes with responsibility to individual students.
Market Accountability
In the view of many school critics, the highest form of accountability is "market discipline"-the need for vendors in a competitive marketplace to satisfy customer demands. In the market model, a school would give parents what they wanted, or the parents would take their business elsewhere, leaving the school to wither away.
As conservative critics often observe, market accountability has played a limited role in American education because public schools, for all practical purposes, have held a monopolistic position. Anyone who wishes to offer alternative instructional strategies or content can set up a private school, but without the financial support offered to public institutions; parents seeking an alternative for their children can go outside the system, but at considerable personal expense.
Within the past decade, however, charter schools, voucher plans, and other forms of educational choice have taken root across the country, and market thinking is playing a strong role in current accountability debates. In an era of skepticism about government, the idea that schools should compete "like everyone else" is intellectually appealing and emotionally satisfying. As business executives Lou Gerstner and colleagues (1994) put it, "Results are not achieved by bureaucratic regulation. They are achieved by meeting customer requirements, by rewards for success and penalties for failure. Market discipline is the key, the ultimate form of accountability."
Despite its strong influence on current rhetoric, the marketplace still plays an ambiguous role in the accountability system. In a pure market model, there would be no role for state-mandated standards or for bureaucratic punishments and rewards; parents would simply select the schools that best satisfied their own standards of quality. There are few signs, however, that the public is prepared for such a strong market-based strategy.
While endorsing the idea that competition is healthy, the public seems to be uninformed and disengaged on educational choice (Steve Farkas and colleagues 1999). Thus far, choice mechanisms have operated on the fringes, in urban environments where performance is lowest and public frustration is highest, and where the attitude seems to be, "What have we got to lose?"
In most cases, market strategies seem to be designed as object lessons (showing how scrappy little charter schools can get the job done) or as threats (as in Florida, where vouchers will go to parents in failing public schools). Recently the Education Commission of the States has recommended an "evolutionary" two-tier governance system that would allow public school districts to directly operate schools as they have traditionally done (although with careful attention to results) or to operate as overseers of independently operated (but publicly funded) schools. The commission believes this approach will "preserve public education and build on strengths of the prevailing system, and... infuse it with a greater capacity for adaptability, flexibility, and accountability" (Education Commission of the States 1999).
Finding a Coherent System
These multiple layers of accountability make it difficult for policymakers and educators to establish a focused, coherent strategy. The kind of accountability demanded by one constituency may be unrelated to, or even inconsistent with, the demands of another. For instance, Charles Abelmann and Richard Elmore (1999) found that many schools had internal professional standards of accountability that did not match externally imposed bureaucratic demands. When the external expectations conflicted with internal standards, teachers tended to ignore or co-opt the outside standards.
Despite this complexity, policymakers in recent years have converged on a combination of strategies that, for all practical purposes, constitute a uniform model of accountability. Particularly at the state level, policymakers have made impressive progress in forging a unitary system that incorporates an interlocking set of practices and structures designed to collectively facilitate student achievement. Specifically, states have moved toward a system that sets clear goals (standards), assesses student progress, reports results to the public, incorporates incentives and sanctions based on the results, and provides resources for carefully targeted teacher-development activities (Southern Regional Education Board 1998).
Standards
Standards-clear statements of academic expectations-are the heart of the new system. The American tradition of local control has resulted in a system in which each district (sometimes each school) defines the learning goals for its students. On the surface, schools across the country seem to share considerable similarity in purpose; from one district to the next, there is not much difference in curricula, textbooks, and philosophy. But a closer look tells a different story. Mike Schmoker and Robert J. Marzano (1999) note:
There are enormous differences in what teachers teach in the same subject and the same grade level in the same school. Even when common, highly structured textbooks are used as the basis for a curriculum, teachers make independent and idiosyncratic decisions regarding what should be emphasized, what should be added and what should be deleted.
They add that the perception of a common, coherent program is a "delusion."
In recent years, however, policymakers have made a concerted effort to define learning expectations not just as broad goals but as concrete objectives with specific benchmarks at different grade levels. In Washington State, for example, legislators identified four "essential learnings":
• GOAL I: Read with comprehension, write with skill, and communicate effectively and responsibly in a variety of ways and settings.
• GOAL II: Know and apply the core concepts and principles of mathematics; social, physical, and life sciences; civics and history; geography; arts; and health and fitness.
• GOAL III: Think analytically, logically, and creatively, and integrate experience and knowledge to form reasoned judgments and solve problems.
• GOAL IV: Understand the importance of work and how performance, effort, and decisions directly affect career and educational opportunities.
With these broad goals in place, the state then developed progressively more specific outcomes for each goal. In Goal II, for example, the mathematical component is broken down into five outcomes:
1. The student understands the basic concepts and procedures of mathematics, how to use them, why they work.
2. The student uses mathematics to define and solve problems.
3. The student uses mathematical reasoning.
4. The student effectively communicates mathematical ideas in both everyday and mathematical language.
5. The student understands how mathematical ideas connect to other subject areas, real-life situations, and career goals.
Each of the above as subgoals is then further reduced to even more specific outcomes. For example, to demonstrate mastery of subgoal 1, students must be able to understand and apply number sense, measurement, spatial sense, probability and statistics, and functions and relationships. Finally, the state provides benchmarks at several grade levels. By fourth grade, for example, students should be able to "use objects, pictures, or symbols to demonstrate understanding of whole and fractional numbers, place value in whole numbers, and properties of the whole number system." Seventh-graders should be able to "use pictures and symbols to demonstrate understanding of fractions, decimals, percents, place value in non-negative decimals, and properties of the rational number system."
The psychology behind the standards model is simple: people tend to live up to expectations. Jean Johnson and Ann Duffett (1999) put it this way:
Central to the public's belief in higher standards is what amounts to a philosophical rule of thumb for dealing with children. Ask more from them, and they will do more. Ask less, and they will do just enough to get by. This belief is especially powerful for many people because it often stems from experiences they have had in their own lives. In focus groups, participants often tell stories about teachers, parents, bosses or even drill sergeants who challenged them, and as a result, brought them to a higher plane of accomplishment. If it's been true in my own life, people reason, then it will work for others as well.
In addition, standards act as a compass, helping teachers decide what content and activities are of most worth. Schmoker and Marzano note, "A well-articulated focus unleashes individual and collective energy. And a common focus clarifies understanding, accelerates communication, and promotes persistence and collective purpose." For both students and teachers, knowing exactly what they are expected to do makes it more likely they will mobilize their energies to meet those expectations.
Assessment
Testing students has long been a routine activity in schools, but much of this assessment has been only loosely tied to curricular goals. Educators have tended to view test results as a measure of individual student achievement rather than of collective school effectiveness. Most standardized tests are generic instruments that sample broad subject domains and therefore offer limited feedback on the quality of content being taught in particular classrooms.
Thus many states are developing their own criterion-referenced assessments that are closely linked to state learning standards. In this way, policymakers can get an annual snapshot of student progress on state-mandated goals, and schools can get clear feedback on their effectiveness in helping students achieve those goals.
Statewide assessments are also attention-getters. Students typically keep a close eye on assessments; when teachers warn that "this is going to be on the test," students sit up, tune in, and begin highlighting. For teachers as well, incorporating certain material on a statewide assessment carries the message, "This is important." In examining the way that Washington schools responded to new state assessments, Robin Lake and colleagues (1999) noted that, whatever else one could say about the tests, educators did take note and respond to them.
Thus, while accountability involves much more than a test, well-focused, high-profile assessments lend credibility and moral authority to the standards they reflect.
Reporting Results
Test results are effective motivators only if communicated to those who are in a position to take corrective action: teachers, students, parents, policymakers, and the public at large. The new accountability emphasizes the need to inform the public, and most states now require some form of "public report card."
The report cards are not limited to test scores, but incorporate a wide variety of information considered useful to stakeholders. In fact, no two states have identical report cards (Lynn Olson 1999b). The data may include such things as attendance rates, school safety, dropout rates, teacher qualifications, promotion rates, teacher salaries, and class size. The reports may be lengthy, providing interpretation as well as raw data, or they may simply present numbers without much explanation.
The theory behind public reporting is simple. When stakeholders know how schools are doing, their decisions are better informed. When schools are identified as low performers, their constituencies will place pressure on them to improve; when schools are identified as high performers, they will attract new students or serve as models for other schools. When taxpayers see positive results, they will feel their support of the schools is well spent.
Consequences
Perhaps the most compelling feature of the new accountability is the notion that performance should have tangible consequences. Good performers should be rewarded; marginal performers should face sanctions.
Traditionally, public education has measured accountability in terms of inputs. Teachers who are appropriately qualified, who show up for work, and who follow accepted professional standards in their teaching can expect continued employment and full compensation, no matter how their students perform. Other than their own inherent sense of responsibility, teachers have little incentive to make sure that students reach the goals.
Fred Newmann and colleagues (1996) described a typical scenario:
Teachers at Fremont High gave state mandated achievement and basic skills tests and district criterion tests in the academic subjects. But no one at the school, district or state seemed to do much with the results. Scores were not published and there were no formal consequences for either the school or individual teachers tied to results. Most staff reported that they felt little or no pressure for student success on the tests.
In such a setting, when students fail to learn, teachers may agonize over the lost opportunities, mildly regret that things didn't go better, or simply look forward to the summer. But life goes on, and next year a new group will show up at the classroom door.
Much the same can be said of students. Some, motivated by self or family to gain entry to elite colleges, work exceedingly hard; those who are not so driven find few compelling reasons to exert themselves. Many freely admit they and their peers would achieve more if pressed harder (Ann Bradley 1997). Schools give grades, of course, but grade inflation has made it easier for students to achieve respectable marks with minimal effort.
For all the emphasis on standardized achievement tests, students suffer few consequences for poor scores. Frank, a college student in Washington State, recalls that toward the end of a long achievement test in high school, boredom led him to finish out the test by creating random patterns on the bubble sheets. "It didn't affect anything, so why not?" Students who wish to attend college can almost always find some place that will accept them, irrespective of grade-point average. Those going directly into the workplace know they need a diploma, but the quality of work is not a major factor; employers indicate that they seldom look at transcripts during the hiring process.
For all these reasons, advocates of the new accountability emphasize the need for "high-stakes" tests that do have consequences. When students do well, they should be promoted or graduated, and their teachers should earn a bonus. When students do poorly, they should not progress to the next level, and their teachers should lose their positions or their schools should be closed.
While the idea of consequences is intuitively appealing to the public, it remains the most controversial element in accountability, and most states have moved cautiously in offering either positive incentives or negative sanctions (Lynn Olson 1999c). Yet there is wide agreement that without sanctions, accountability will remain a hollow shell.
Targeting Teacher Development
Newmann and colleagues note that accountability alone will not lead to improvement, but must be combined with organizational capacity to improve. Even in systems that provide strong incentives to succeed, teachers will not improve if they do not know how. Indeed, the effect of strong accountability in low-performing schools may simply be despair and depression. Thus, without the capacity for change, knowledge of poor results may undermine motivation rather than enhance it.
For that reason, accountability systems require a strong teacher-development component to build the needed capacity. Unfortunately, professional-development programs have often been an afterthought in many schools. Teachers get short-term exposure to a smorgasbord of topics, with little time and few resources available to follow through in depth.
An effective accountability system requires teacher-development activities that are tied to student achievement. Unsatisfactory test results should generate training and research opportunities aimed at bringing students closer to the goal. Ideally, these opportunities should be integrated into the daily life of the classroom, not just tacked on to the beginning of the school year.
Unanswered Questions
Entering the new millennium, America's schools increasingly find that accountability is defining the nation's education agenda. The very first action of the George W. Bush Administration was to lay out an education proposal that incorporated many of the principles of standards-based accountability. Yet beneath the relentless forward movement, one could hear quiet voices raising questions that have yet to be answered.
Accountability from Whom?
Advocates of greater accountability often evade the question of exactly who is accountable. Initially, the push for accountability pointed the finger at teachers who were seen as too self-satisfied, unfocused, or incompetent to get results. More recently, critics have conceded that the problem is more systemic than individual, and that teachers are often powerless to act (Gerstner).
But even if we accept that accountability is shared, we are left with perplexing questions about the responsibility of each participant.
Teachers generally concede their key role in the learning process, but balk at the idea that they can single-handedly produce student achievement. For one thing, learning is a complex, often mysterious process that goes on mainly in the head of the learner. To an outside observer, the link between cause (teaching) and effect (learning) is frequently tenuous and often invisible. While teachers often talk wistfully of seeing the light bulb go on over the student's head, they cannot always be sure what flicked the switch, nor can they count on being able to reproduce the effect at will. Education still lacks a universally accepted instructional paradigm. To teach a concept, we can rely on direct instruction, discovery learning, video presentations, kinesthetic activities, assigned reading, and many other possibilities. Each one works-some of the time, but not all the time.
More important, learning requires the cooperation and active participation of the learner, something not always forthcoming from students who are involuntary participants or who increasingly come to school with psychological baggage that makes academic learning a lesser priority. Jennifer O'Day (1997) notes that learning is a joint production of teachers and students. Teachers can plan, instruct, cajole, admonish, and evaluate, but in the end nothing happens unless the student accepts the challenge of learning. Likewise, Philip Schlechty (1990) sees learning ("knowledge work") as something that must be done by the student. The teacher's role is to establish conditions that enable and support the process, but the student must do the work.
Thus, teachers are more comfortable with an input model of accountability that defines their responsibility in terms of dedicated effort and use of "best practices" rather than outcomes that they don't directly control. In the minds of teachers, there is a lingering scent of unfairness about the idea of being held accountable for something beyond their immediate control.
School leaders are obvious targets for accountability, since virtually everything that happens in their buildings is considered in their domain. Most principals, in fact, are already familiar with-and resigned to-the idea they will be held responsible for outcomes that are beyond their direct control.
Despite this inherent accountability, many administrators, like teachers, are reluctant to frame their responsibility in terms of ensuring student outcomes. For example, the Association of Washington School Principals (http://www.awsp.org) endorses the idea that "the principal is accountable for the continuous growth of students and increased building performance," but then outlines specific responsibilities in terms of functions or inputs:
• Design, implement, and monitor building procedures and practices that promote a safe and orderly school environment.
• Advocate, influence, and sustain a school culture conducive to continuous improvement for students and staff.
• Lead the development, implementation, and evaluation of data-driven plan(s) for improvement of student achievement.
• Assist instructional staff in implementation of curriculum, instruction, and assessment aligned with state and local learning goals.
• Monitor and evaluate staff implementation of school improvement plans and effective instructional practice(s).
• Manage human and financial resources to accomplish student achievement goals.
• Communicate and partner with colleagues, parents, and community members to promote student learning.
In addition, AWSP points out the kind of support that must be provided by the district, as well as the authority principals require to carry out their responsibilities. Thus, as with teachers, principals are cautious about accepting unilateral responsibility for student learning.
Students clearly bear some responsibility for their own learning, a fact recognized by the states that have tied graduation to assessment scores. Yet how far can their responsibility be pushed? Students, after all, are minors, lacking the experience that allows them to make wise choices, and immature by definition. Can we ask them to achieve at a high level when they have not been offered the proper support, both at school and at home? This is especially true for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, for whom rigorous high-stakes assessments may be a one-way ticket to the margins of society.
Parents, by general consensus, play a key role in student learning, both by providing a safe, nurturing home environment and by supporting and reinforcing the work of the school. Unfortunately, teachers have seen too many students from homes where there is little willingness to provide for children's basic needs, much less a push to learn. Yet the accountability here is a moral rather than a legal one. Parents are required to send their children to school, and keep them from harm the rest of the time, but not much more than that. Indeed, market-oriented approaches to accountability view parents as customers whose only responsibility is to choose a school for their children.
Some schools have tried to develop parental accountability by having them sign "contracts" in which all participants have pledged to live up to certain responsibilities. More daringly, some schools are experimenting with "grading" parents by sending home checklists documenting how well students are prepared for school (Michelle Galley 2000). Yet these are mostly symbolic gestures, and it is not clear how schools could enforce any obligations on parents.
From all this, it takes no great imagination to make the case that accountability is collective, and that all stakeholders have a responsibility. Sarah Brooks (2000) says the key is reciprocity: "Feelings of accountability and responsibility arise from a mutual sort of agreement-you provide me with the tools and environment conducive to high performance, and I agree to do what I need to do to meet your expectations."
Yet in saying learning is everyone's responsibility, do we run the risk of undermining the sense of personal obligation that is at the heart of accountability? When we emphasize reciprocity, do we simply authorize finger-pointing? When we say, "students must do the learning," do we make it too easy for teachers to say, "I taught; they must not have learned"? Such questions have to be worked out through a continual process of dialogue and reflection, not through policy mandates.
Accountability to Whom?
Wagner notes that in an accountability relationship, there is always someone to whom we owe our accounting. To whom are educators accountable? The most obvious answer is to whomever pays their salaries. Any job involves an implicit contract governing the exchange: a job to be done and a salary in return. Thus, governing boards and legislatures have the most obvious right to demand accountability.
However, most teachers and many administrators also see themselves as having a strong-perhaps even dominant-responsibility to their students. The abstract employment relationship is easily overshadowed by the immediacy and vibrancy of a roomful of needy students. Should teachers perceive a conflict between what they owe employers and what they owe their students, the resolution would be far from certain. For example, teachers may see a heavy emphasis on state standards and assessments as an injustice to students whose backgrounds have not prepared them to compete with more affluent students, or they may believe the assessments narrow the curriculum and drain it of richness and diversity.
In reality, most educators live in a web of responsibilities that make them accountable to many people for many things, and satisfying all those obligations requires continuous negotiation and dialogue.
Accountability How?
Granted that educators owe an accounting to the designated authorities, what is the best way to ensure that they live up to their responsibilities? Much of the debate centers around motivation: What is the best way to keep students and teachers on track and fully living up to their responsibilities? The simple answer, which is embedded in so much of today's accountability debate, is that people respond to carrots and sticks. Reward good performance and punish poor performance, and they'll fall in line.
But while this view is intuitively appealing, psychologists can provide ample evidence that human motivation is infinitely complex, and sometimes counterintuitive. Teachers and students are not rats in a Skinner box, and they bring a world of experiences, perceptions, and values to the classroom. How they respond to the policymakers' rewards and punishments is not a foregone conclusion.
In fact, there are already signs of a "standards backlash," as a diverse group of critics take issue with key elements of standards-driven accountability (David Hoff 1999). Alfie Kohn (1993), for example, has argued that its motivational theory is too simplistic, and that standards often narrow the scope of the curriculum by exalting an outdated instructional strategy. Accountability, Kohn claims, "has approximately the same effect on learning that a noose has on breathing."
Other critics complain that the new accountability undermines professional autonomy, has a disproportionate effect on schools with large numbers of disadvantaged students, and attempts to hold teachers accountable for things they cannot control (Scott Willis 1999). More dramatically, students have protested the new emphasis on assessment by boycotting state-mandated tests (Jacques Steinberg 2000). Finally, no matter how compelling the rationale for standards-based accountability, it is still far too early to know whether it will have a significant effect.
Accountability for How Long?
Some educators harbor a suspicion that many people don't really want the high standards being demanded so glibly. It is easy to call for rigorous standards-Who could be against that?-but those standards may begin to chafe when failure brings the real consequences that accountability demands.
Occasionally the very policymakers who imposed a standards-driven system will back away from the ultimate implications. For example, after years of building a standards-based system, the Wisconsin legislature firmly rejected a requirement that graduation be tied to assessment results. Legislators raised questions ranging from fairness to expense, but may also have been envisioning the political fallout when schools began to deny diplomas to children of constituents. For their part, parents often lose enthusiasm for accountability if it derails their children's steady progress toward college or a decent job.
Such cases reinforce educators' fears that accountability will be one more short-term wonder, a fad that, like a tornado, sweeps down on a town and is quickly gone, leaving survivors to pick up the pieces.
All these questions have created a sense of caution in the education community. In January 2001, the Learning First Alliance, a broad-based coalition of professional organizations, called for "mid-course corrections" to standards-based accountability. In particular, the alliance articulated five core concerns:
Alignment of standards, curriculum, and assessments. Since teachers tend to teach what tests measure, assessments should be fully aligned with standards and should include higher level thinking skills using a variety of test formats. Likewise, schools should offer "deep and rich curriculum" that fully covers the spectrum of standards, not just language arts and mathematics.
Adequate professional development for teachers and principals. Successful implementation of standards requires practitioners to learn new skills, and "intensive and ongoing" professional development is essential.
Sufficient resources and support for each child to meet high standards. For all students to achieve high standards, states and districts must be prepared to invest significant resources in upgraded curriculum, improved training, extended learning time, smaller class sizes, modern facilities, and enhanced technology.
Communication about the importance of standards and accountability. States, districts, and schools must inform parents and public about the purpose, nature, and implications of standards-based accountability.
Balanced and comprehensive accountability systems. Student success should not hinge on a single measure of achievement. High-stakes decisions should be based on a broad range of indicators.
The alliance emphasized that it was not calling for a change of direction and expressed a "sense of urgency" about accelerating improvement efforts. Yet its statement, coming from unions, administrators, parents, teacher educators, school boards, and state education officials, signaled that the education community sees the route to accountability not as a straight-ahead charge, but as a cautious exploration of unknown territory.
Managing the Accountability Challenge
Many school leaders have welcomed the current push for accountability because it underlines the responsibility of all stakeholders to focus on student learning. A unified push for achievement, with all parts of the system working in sync, is an energizing prospect. Yet the same leaders may also suspect that when the cheering is over, the buck will still screech to a halt where it always has: in the principal's office.
For now, school leaders are faced with the formidable challenge of integrating the new external demands into the life of the school, in a way that does not undermine the positive initiatives already under way at the local level.
The task brings both benefits and risks. On the one hand, external accountability provides a potent rationale for moving people off dead center. Most teachers understand the reality of state control and bureaucratic accountability, and recognize the need to respond, however grudgingly, to mandates. On the other hand, imposed standards can threaten local initiatives. Teachers who have worked hard to establish a rich array of authentic assessment tools in their school may be demoralized by having to measure student success with a state-mandated, multiple-choice exam. Seeing strong external controls, teachers may infer a lack of trust and a corresponding devaluation of their work (Willis). Helping schools find the balance between external and internal standards may be the principal's most critical task in the decade to come.
The remainder of this book explores the nature of that challenge. Chapter 2 explores the psychological assumptions behind the new accountability systems, drawing on motivational theory to identify the key factors that lead teachers, students, and parents to make achievement a priority.
The next five chapters examine the major components of the current accountability model and their implications for school leaders. Chapter 3 describes how state and local standards can create a publicly communicated, clearly understood set of expectations for learning. Chapter 4 discusses the appropriate use of assessment in the accountability system.
Chapter 5 looks at the critical role of incentives and consequences in motivating teachers, students, and parents. Chapter 6 provides recommendations for developing a system for reporting results to the public, and chapter 7 explains how professional development can support and enhance the accountability process.
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