Accountability: Antecedents, Power, and Processes (original) (raw)
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Chaire de recherche du Canada en politiques éducatives, Université de Montréal., 2016
Accountability and accountability policies have known international expansion for the last decades. In a context of a growing concern for the quality of education accountability has become a centerpiece of educational reforms, supposed to improve effectiveness and equity in education systems. Despite the increasing popularity of accountability policies in education the link between these policies and the improvement of pupils achievement remains unclear. Moreover accountability policies take several forms and rely on various tools depending on the contexts where they are implemented. This paper aims at providing some insights regarding the development of accountability policies in education. It first discusses the polysemic character of this notion to focus thereafter on the development of accountability policies in education systems. After proposing a typology of accountability policies and tools, we discuss the main research finding regarding the effects of accountability policies on effectiveness and equity in education systems to discuss then central issues for further research.
The No Child Left Behind Act in the Global Architecture of Educational Accountability
History of Education Quarterly
Although chiefly framed in the context of domestic education policy, debates about the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) echoed international education policy debates and the workings of global education governance. As this article demonstrates, both domestic and international efforts were shaped by three key features: tension between centralized goals and historically localized practices and authorities; links between education policy goals and a set of rhetorical arguments centered on human capital; and competitive comparisons among education systems that mixed market rhetoric with prestige dynamics. These common features can be attributed to the development of a “soft governance” layer, in which multilateral surveillance plays a major part. In the US, such development began before NCLB, accelerated during the NCLB era, and remained after NCLB was replaced by the Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015.
Towards a Comparative and International History of School Testing and Accountability
The speed and extent of modern school accountability have obscured the history of testing and accountability. This brief introduction identifies central themes of historical research into educational accountability and recurring traits associated with accountability practices. We hope our colleagues and this special issue will also help to identify future research paths in this field. Some of the central themes found in the historical research on educational accountability contained in this special issue are the connections between accountability and the purposes of schooling in a specific time and place, the relationships between school accountability structures and the state, as well as accountability as a cultural phenomenon. One of the recurring traits found in accountability practices is the role of accountability as a phenomenon that cannot be treated in isolation from society at large along with the attendant questions of power, education access, education management, and social selection. Another key trait is that accountability practices always seem to encompass a certain historically given configuration of stakeholder positions. The research paths pointing beyond the themes treated here are identified as a post- colonial perspective, differences and similarities between public and private sector accountability measures, the “engines” promoting the rise, proliferation and implementation of accountability measures, and finally the exploration of the travelling and movement of accountability ideas, knowledge and practices and how they actually impact and connect with national, regional and local practices. Keywords: Accountability, testing, history of education, comparative education
Accountability Research Center, Accountability Working Paper 5., 2019
This article addresses the relationship between the concepts of Social Accountability and Educational Accountability. The analysis of the similarities, differences and tensions between these two different concepts can strengthen citizen participation for educational improvement by identifying the full range of actors and processes in decision making that influence the success or failure of educational policy beyond of the teachers.We encounter two distinctive features involving social accountability mechanisms in the field of education: (1) There are many actors who participate in education, making it difficult to identify precisely who is responsible for key deci-sions, and (2) In education policy one encounters the concept of educational accountability, which refers to a series of mechanisms to hold schools and teachers accountable for educational outcomes by adopting standardized tests on a widespread basis to motivate change and steady improvement. Are the approaches of social accountability and educational accountability compatible? What are their differences and similarities? What are the effects of these differences when it comes to formulating solutions to the crisis in education? Through a comparative analysis, and looking at the Mexican case in depth, it becomes clear that we have to examine more than the tip of the iceberg. The educational accountability perspective is insufficient and at times counter-productive for educational improvement because it has a series of biases that are centered on the symptoms more than the causes of the structural problems related to low education levels. These biases include (1) Reducing the criteria for assessing the success of education policies to the outcomes of standardized tests, (2) Identifying teach-ers as the main actors responsible for educational outcomes, without considering other associated factors, such as student characteristics and socio-economic factors, (3) The concentration of negative consequences in the last chain of interaction—teachers and schools—which disproportionately affects students and teachers, and (4) Difficulties in mobilizing citizens around the demand for a better education. The school and the teachers are the main providers of educational services, but their performance is not the only cause of educational outcomes. This is why we need to construct an expanded vision of social accountability in education, based on a human rights perspective all of the actors assume our responsibility inside and outside the schools, to facilitate: (1) The generation of broad and fair criteria of success for evaluating education policy, using various evaluation methodologies and the results to generate formative feedback; (2) To better identify those responsible and their responsibilities, focusing on those factors that improve equity and quality, increase students’ motivation to learn, reduce the burden of the socio-economic inequalities, and help produce more supportive schools and teachers, and (3) The involvement of citizens to achieve better learning, build relationships based on mutual trust, and complement access to local information with policy monitoring throughout the chain of decision-making.
Accountability in education : Meeting our commitments
2017
This paper was commissioned by the Global Education Monitoring Report as background information to assist in drafting the 2017/8 GEM Report, Accountability in education: Meeting our commitments. It has not been edited by the team. The views and opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and should not be attributed to the Global Education Monitoring Report or to UNESCO. The papers can be cited with the following reference: “Paper commissioned for the 2017/8 Global Education Monitoring Report, Accountability in education: Meeting our commitments”. For further information, please contact gemreport@unesco.org. ED/GEMR/MRT/2017/C1/3
Accountability policy forms in European educational systems: An Outro
European Educational Research Journal, 2020
This article presents the discussion and the conclusion of an EERJ Special Issue on accountability policy forms in four European educational systems aimed at identifying how global schemes and instruments of accountability are integrated into national governance patterns. The comparative discussion indicates that accountability instruments and schemes take the form of singular trajectories that are neither a continuation of the national histories nor an indexation on global governance models. It also emphasises the need to better conceptualise how power relations in the interface between the global and national scenes, as well as within national contexts, shape the accountability forms.
Accountability in American education as a rhetoric and a technology of governmentality
Accountability is one of the most advocated and controversial topics in US education. Since the early 2000s, the federal government has produced a vibrant discourse on accountability, which emphasizes quality, efficiency, and equal opportunity in education. As part of the larger phenomenon of new managerialism, the dominant forms of accountability are currently based on the power of the manager and the market rather than the bureaucratic or professional authority. This study draws on classic rhetoric and the Foucaultian concept of governmentality to analyze the rhetorical construction of accountability in the US Department of Education speeches and examine the role of accountability in governing educational institutions and subjects. The author demonstrates how as a rhetoric, accountability in education operates as a ‘sacred language’ to propagate neoliberal values and how as a technology of governmentality, it works to maintain the neoliberal political rationality, enforce the openness of educational institutions to government oversight, and enable entrepreneurial subjectivities through responsibilization and moralization of consumer-style choice-making. The author argues that centered on the market-oriented forms of accountability, federal education policies have a limited potential for meeting its officially promoted goals, particularly with regard to equalizing opportunity for minority- and low-income students.