Ashley Conrad

TE 818
April 30, 2015
Accountability in Education
The issue of accountability in American public schools is one of the most important issues in
education today. Since the current accountability system used in the U.S. invites significant concern,
changes to the system must be made. It is absolutely necessary for schools to have goals and standards,
with systems for assessing those standards and accountability to create incentives for those who meet
the goals and standards and consequences and interventions for those who do not. However, in order
for accountability to be effective, schools must be assessed on a broad spectrum of student outcomes.
Additionally, assessments must be effective at accurately measuring student outcomes. The authority
for creating the standards assessed and the responsibility for holding schools accountable should not
fall on one entity, but should instead be shared, though not necessarily equally, by the federal
government, the state governments, local school districts, and individual teachers. Moreover,
accountability needs to take a more balanced approach, including the incorporation of a growth model,
not only evaluating schools on their results but also focusing on how well schools are running the
process of educating students and providing schools with resources to improve in their areas of
weakness.
In Grading Education: Getting Accountability Right, Rothstein, Jacobsen and Wilder argue that
the No Child Left Behind legislation is both ineffective and has had a corrupting effect on the
American education system (2008, p. 141). Their key concerns about NCLB legislation are that it is
too narrow, both in terms of curriculum and targeted students, and that quantitative data alone often
leads to teaching to the test and other systems of adjusting results. Rothstein, Jacobsen and Wilder
argue that there are eight broad goals of education that are generally agreed upon by the general public:

basic academic knowledge and skills, critical thinking and problem solving, appreciation of the arts
and literature, preparation for skilled employment, social skills and work ethic, citizenship and
community responsibility, physical health, and emotional health (Grading Education: Getting
Accountability Right, 2008, p. 14). However, the current NCLB testing that takes place only provides
for assessment in Math and English. Since schools and teachers are only being assessed on a
subsection of basic academic knowledge and skills, and since oftentimes only what gets measured
gest done (Levinson, 2011, p. 133), seven essential goals of education are being overlooked in favor
of some basic skills. Several surveys of school district officials, principals, and teachers confirm that
the public school curriculum has been dangerously narrowed because of accountability pressures to
post higher math and reading scoresdistricts cut an average of an hour or more [per week] from
instruction in social studies, science, art and music, physical education, and recess (Rothstein,
Jacobsen, & Wilder, 2008, pp. 47,49). Additionally, there are concerns about only students just below
passing receiving significant teacher attention, as these are the students who would be most likely to
improve the schools AYP scores. This leaves students above passing and significantly below passing
in classrooms solely focused on improving their AYP data (Rothstein, Jacobsen, & Wilder, 2008, pp.
66-67). This means that the students who need the most help do not receive it, and talented students are
not challenged.
A second major concern presented by Rothstein, Jacobsen, and Wilder is the idea that
quantitative data alone is not sufficient to measure the achievement of both students and schools. First
of all there is much concern over the manipulation of data and cut scores, which make the numeric data
shaky at best (Grading Education: Getting Accountability Right, 2008, pp. 53-55, 59-66). To add to
this concern, there is evidence that many teachers and schools are gaming the tests either by teaching
exclusively to the test, by manipulating student population subsets, or by cheating outright (Rothstein,
Jacobsen, & Wilder, 2008, pp. 67-70). Cut scores to measure proficiency also present a problem as

these scores are often arbitrarily set. This results in cases where a school might be considered
delinquent one year and granted honorary status the next (Rothstein, Jacobsen, & Wilder, 2008, pp. 6566). Moreover, the nature of quantitative data is that it can only measure things that are quantifiable.
Such data cannot measure goals like appreciation of the arts, social skills, or physical health.
Additionally, Meira Levinson expresses a concern that our current accountability system is
undermining democratic education (Democracy, accountability, and education, 2011, p. 125). She
argues that while it is important that some aspects of education be common, if all students share the
exact same educational experiences, the diversity that is essential for a democracy to flourish would be
lost (Levinson, 2011, pp. 129, 133-134). She also argues that there are many essential elements of
citizenship that simply cannot be measured under the current system. Things that are critical to teach,
but are being pushed aside in order to improve AYP numbers (Levinson, 2011, pp. 135-138).
Another essential issue with the current accountability system is that it is exclusively results
oriented. In the past, both school and teacher evaluations were more procedural, examining whether or
not educators were running the process of effectively instructing students, regardless of the results
(Hallinger, Heck, & Murphy, 2014, p. 9). By creating a system based solely on results, we are sending
the message that the process does not matter. We are saying that it is not important whether we create
positive learning environments for students, whether teachers build relationships with students, if
students are having positive learning experiences just so long as their test scores reflect the required
level of achievement. In addition to being done on a national, state, or school level, individual teachers
are more and more being evaluated on the results of their students instead of the process by which they
help their students learn. This new evaluation system, however, is highly problematic in that it is not
producing any additional student growth and in that those required to serve as evaluators find it
difficult at best and counter-productive at worst to intensify their efforts at teacher evaluation
(Hallinger, Heck, & Murphy, 2014, p. 22). Education specialist, Janet Looney goes on to say that,

teacher evaluation systems that emphasise accountability may be counterproductive to improvement.

Teachers are less likely to reveal any weaknesses in their performance, and therefore miss
opportunities for feedback or professional learning and development (Developing High-Quality
Teachers: teacher evaluation for improvement, 2011, p. 448).
With all of these issues over our current educational accountability system, how can we create a
system that works? The first step is creating the right balance of power between accountability and
standards coming from the federal government, the state governments, local school districts, and
individual teachers. Levinson proposed an accountability sharing model, based on the British system,
where 50-60% of students time was taken up meeting publicly created standards in the United
States and the rest of the time would be divided into meeting locally created standards and allowing
the teacher time and freedom to teach other things (Democracy, accountability, and education, 2011, p.
140). While this model is on the right track, I think it would make more sense to allow the federal
government to create the standards for approximately 25% of student time focusing on the math and
reading portions of the basic academic knowledge and skills goal and the critical thinking and problem
solving goal. The state governments would be allotted roughly 40% of student time. The state
governments would create standards for the other elements of the critical thinking and problem solving
goal and the basic academic knowledge and skills goal, especially in other academic areas like science
and use of technology. The state would also share responsibility with local districts for the following
goals: appreciation of the arts and literature, preparation for skilled employment, physical and
emotional health. The local school districts would receive 20% of student time, and would be
responsible for the following goals: community responsibility and social skills and work ethic. Social
studies standards should be divided logically by expertise: the federal government should be
responsible for standards with regards to U.S. and world history, geography and governments, as well
as on being a responsible global and national citizen. States would be responsible for standards dealing

with state and regional history, geography, government, and state citizenship, while individual districts
and schools would be responsible for local history, geography, government, and community
citizenship, as well as additional social studies content that they believe important or desired by their
community. Additionally, teachers would be given 15% of student time to fill in what gaps they see in
the curriculum.
While shared accountability allows different entities to do assessments, the assessments done
need to be holistic and reflect the aforementioned goals of education. Some of these goals will be
measured with multiple assessments. Traditional paper and pencil assessments of high quality need to
be developed that use short answer, essays, and performance tasks in addition to multiple choice
questions in order to assess at a deeper level. The question bank for the assessments needs to be
sufficiently diverse that teachers will not know which parts of the curriculum will be on the test in any
given year and will be forced to teach the curriculum in its entirety to the best of their ability.
Moreover, qualified evaluators with actual experience in education from the federal
government, the state government, and the district administration should continuously make
impromptu visits to classrooms to observe what is really taking place in terms of both learning and
culture. As Looney explains, there is some evidence that school-level inspections may contribute to
improvements in teacher and student performanceMore intensive inspections produced greater
improvements in school performance (Developing High-Quality Teachers: teacher evaluation for
improvement, 2011, p. 446). Schools should have inspection years from both the state and the federal
government where reports of how well schools are meeting all of their goals is reported. Schools that
do not pass inspections will be provided with resources and recommendations and will then be
inspected at more frequent intervals until the school is passing. If after multiple inspections, a school
still does not pass decisions will have to be made about replacing school staff (Rothstein, Jacobsen, &
Wilder, 2008, pp. 154-156).

Districts should also take a more active role in assessing their teachers and administrators by
doing frequent drop-in visits. The current Michigan mandated three observations each year is wholly
insufficient to really get a feel for the classroom activities and environment. The evaluation paper work
requirements for evaluators should be streamlined and additional evaluators hired by districts to
support more observers in schools and classrooms to receive a more accurate feel for what is really
taking place. Additional observations may also include opportunities to observe less easily
quantifiable characteristics, such as relationships with students, how teachers communicate their
expectations for student performance, and how they guide formation of values (Looney, 2011, p.
449).
It might also be advisable to contract out evaluators who are retired teachers in good standing
to evaluate teachers in lieu of or in addition to administrators. In my own school, I have found it rather
odd to have an administrator who has never taught and another who taught for eight years ten years
ago to be evaluating teachers in other subject areas who have been teaching thirty plus years. It is also
a little strange to be evaluated on teaching French in a class conducted 70-90% in French by someone
who cannot speak the language.
It is also essential to incorporate more of a process-oriented growth model to teacher
accountability. Teacher accountability systems that promote improvement use the information gathered
from the observation process to identify teachers strengths and weaknesses to guide teachers to
appropriate professional development opportunities (Looney, 2011, p. 448). It has been show that nonevaluative channels of teacher observation lead to some of the greatest gains in instructional quality
including, providing actionable feedback to teachers, creating professional communities in which
teachers share goals, work, and responsibility for student outcomes, offering tangible support for the
work of teachers in which teachers have the opportunity for ongoing professional learning (Hallinger,

Heck, & Murphy, 2014, p. 22). While teachers still need to be evaluated, incorporating a much larger
growth element will allow evaluation to be used for improvement as well as assessment.
Teachers should also have to submit lesson plans to the district for approval of their 15% of
independent lessons, and should afterward provide the district with samples of student work from these
lessons. Schools should also present portfolios at the district level and districts at the state level
demonstrating the programs that they have in place to work towards elements of goals not easily
measured. Hopefully these changes would bring about a more holistic education for all students that
would provide for both commonalities among all students and the freedom to also express their
differences.
In conclusion, while there are a large number of issues with your current system of
accountability that lead to our students being under-taught and taught too narrowly, many changes can
be instituted that would bring about dramatic improvements. Accountability can be distributed among
a number of stake-holders instead of weighing too heavily on the federal government, the state
governments, or the local schools. Assessments can be revamped to include qualitative as well as
quantitative data. Schools can bring in evaluators who have long-term classroom experience. The
mindset for evaluation can be shifted to focus less on assessing where teachers or schools are currently
and judging them on that and more on how to empower schools and teachers to overcome their
weaknesses. The process of change is never smooth, and with such dramatic changes as are outlined
here, a seamless transition to the new system is hardly likely. However, even though change presents
challenges, when the costs of our current system on students are examined and compared to the
potential gains of a new system, we are duty bound to attempt such change.

Works Cited
Hallinger, P., Heck, R., & Murphy, J. (2014, January 16). Teacher evaluation and school improvement: An
analysis of the evidence. Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 26(1), pp. 5-28.
doi:10.1007/s11092-013-9179-5
Levinson, M. (2011). Democracy, accountability, and education. In Theory and Research in Education (pp. 125144). Sage.
Looney, J. (2011). Developing High-Quality Teachers: teacher evaluation for improvement. European Journal of
Education, 46(4), pp. 440-455. doi:10.1111/j.1465-3435.2011.01492.x
Rothstein, R., Jacobsen, R., & Wilder, T. (2008). Grading Education: Getting Accountability Right. New York:
Teachers College Press.