Accountability

Exploring a controversial issue in education series ... Accountability

This pamphlet is also available in PDF format

Background

We invest a lot in public education, and the work our schools do is crucially important to the well-being of our society. Parents and taxpayers want to know whether the public education system is doing its job and how it might be improved.

For some, accountability in the context of public education has taken on a very specific meaning. According to them, accountability can only be achieved when the performance of students, teachers, schools and jurisdictions is measured, reported and compared.

Others take a deeper view of accountability. They point out that education does not take place in a vacuum, and that many external factors influence the outcomes of schooling. Supporters of this view of accountability believe that learning is a complex process that cannot be adequately measured by standardized tests or a few easily collected statistics.

Beliefs

Supporters of the school accountability movement believe that

performance measures and performance incentives will improve school performance;
schools should operate like businesses, with accountability reflected in the bottom line;
testing students and using the results to rank schools will hold schools accountable; and
accountability will sort the winners from the losers and provide parents with information to make decisions for their children.

Considerations

When thinking about accountability, ask the following questions:

Is accountability being promoted for economic rather than educational reasons?
Does testing in the name of accountability serve the educational needs of individual students?
Do accountability indicators measure what is important, or only what can be easily counted?
Does accountability focus on improving education for all students?
What is the cost of the accountability agenda? What is being sacrificed to pay for the collection and reporting of indicators of educational performance?

A Closer Look

Teachers agree that the education system must be accountable to parents and taxpayers. Increasingly, however, accountability is being narrowly defined and based on what can be easily reduced to numbers. This type of accountability is more likely to sort "winners" from "losers" and the "successful" from the "unsuccessful" rather than foster the development of each child. In the process, decisions made about education will be distorted as schools succumb to pressure to "get the numbers up."

Real accountability is something quite different. As Lorna Earl (1998) points out: "Accountability looks forward. Being accountable is not a ledger page or a spread sheet. It means taking the information and using it to make judgements about quality, about how good is good enough, and, most importantly, about how to make changes that will enhance and extend student learning, for all children. Accountability is active not passive. It happens at parents' nights, in town hall meetings, in public debates, on talk shows, in board rooms and living rooms, wherever people gather and discuss education."

Those who really want an accountable education system can best achieve this by becoming intensely involved in their local schools, striving to develop a common vision for public education in their community and working with the entire school community to achieve it.

The Alberta Teachers’ Association