Who Should Be Accountable for Getting Results?

What's the Policy?

As a condition for spending more money on elementary and secondary education, legislatures and state boards of education are increasingly demanding that educators be accountable for achieving results. No longer content to measure quality schooling by its inputs (school facilities, dollars spent, teacher-pupil ratios, number of books in school libraries, and educators' salaries, for example), policymakers in a number of states are insisting that educators get results, and results are narrowly construed as increased student achievement test scores. In many areas, school report cards are publicized to inform communities about how well their schools are performing in terms of test scores.

How Does It Affect Teachers?

Some states are implementing steps to reward educators whose schools produce more student learning than expected and punish those whose schools fail to meet the accepted standard. For example, in Virginia, by year 2006, 70 percent of the students in each school must successfully pass the statewide assessments of student learning for the school to maintain its accreditation. In other states, educators are being given pay bonuses if the students in their schools exceed expectations.

What Are the Pros?

Advocates of accountability argue that input measures are at best indirect and that the true test of a school's effectiveness is how well its students learn the knowledge and skills it is attempting to teach. They contend that only by looking at the results of students' schooling, as measured by student test scores, can we ascertain the worth of schools.

What Are the Cons?

Many educators are concerned about using test scores for accountability purposes. Should the quality of a school be judged on the basis of a single criterion, test scores? Should all schools be judged on the basis of the same test even if they differ dramatically in terms of the resources available and the challenges faced by the children they serve? Schools serving poorer communities face many more challenges in educating their students than do schools located in wealthier areas. Scores on these standardized tests may reflect the socio-economic status of the communities served more than they indicate the quality of the schools.

What Do You Think?

1. Do you think states should publicly issue school report cards that reflect how well students in a given school performed on statewide assessments of learning standards? What are the advantages and disadvantages of doing so?
2. Can each educator's contribution to a child's learning be determined and distinguished from that of other educators? If so, how?
3. How should other important learning outcomes for which schools are responsible, such as good citizenship, be taken into account in determining a school's effectiveness? Or should they?

For more information on the accountability movement visit these web sites, then reflect on the questions that follow.

Web Links

Accountability

http://www.edweek.org/context/topics/issuespage.cfm?id=49

This "hot topic" summary from the weekly online publication Education Week will give you a good introduction to current events in accountability, along with links to sources of further information and to several articles on recent developments.

Standards, Tests, and Accountability

http://www.edexcellence.net/topics/standards.html

The conservative Thomas B. Fordham Foundation offers this collection of reports and other writings on standards, tests and accountability.

Testing and Accountability

http://www.nea.org/accountability/

This "hot topic" summary from the National Education Association states that organization's position on testing, standards, and accountability, and links you to NEA resources on the topic.

Making Standards Matter

http://www.aft.org/edissues/standards/msm2001/

This 2001 report from the American Federation of Teachers concludes that no states have aligned curriculum standards and testing properly to create an effective accountability program.

Rewards and Sanctions for School Districts and Schools

http://www.ecs.org/clearinghouse/18/24/1824.htm

This report, from the Educational Commission of the States, describes efforts by states to increase accountability by rewarding or punishing schools and school districts on the basis of performance.

What Do We Know About Sanctions and Rewards?

http://www.ascd.org/readingroom/infobrief/issue31.html

This October 2002 Infobrief from the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development summarizes the importance of high-stakes testing to school, teachers, and students across the U.S., and examines research evidence from both supporters and opponents of high-stakes standardized tests.

For Further Reflection

1. What elements would be included in an ideal accountability program for a state? According to your readings, what do states need to change to reach this ideal?
2. The federal No Child Left Behind Act requires states to test children every year, and specifies consequences for schools and districts that, according to test results, are not performing well. Do you think that testing programs, schools, and school districts are ready to meet the challenges of these requirements?
3. What kinds of pressure would you feel if the school where you taught were designated as "low-performing," and had to face sanctions as a result?  Conversely, what kinds of pressure would you feel if your school was ranked as "high-performing?"