Accountability : High Performance And Not Fear Or Stress

Introduced during the 1990’s, accountability is a newer term inside the education world. By definition, accountability holds, not only teachers, but districts, educators, and also students accountable for any results ("Accountability", 2004). Accountability hasn’t always been prominent inside our education. In fact, it wasn’t until the 1990’s when lawmakers began to flirt with the idea. Though accountability became increasingly popular during the end of the previous century, it does possess several roots which began in the 1950’s.

In society, today education plays a vital role for many individuals and teachers play an even more influential role for a student’s future. The 21st century is bringing many new and innovated ways for teachers to communicate and educate in more effective ways than ever before. Despite the multitude advancements, there has been an issue still in the spotlight: teacher accountability. In recent years the United States has significantly fallen behind many of its superpower competitors in education bringing the government quick to impend a change by ranking teachers to improve their accountability however ranking teachers will not improve their accountability because teaching is a craft that cannot be summed up into a rank or grade letter with

This idea is equally as important in the school system. Creating an accountability system in which both teachers and students are held accountable for their performance is key for organizational success. Reeves (2005) states “first an accountability system must be congruent” or attuned with the district current reward or incentive programs (p.93). An effective accountability system should include the following seven principles listed by Reeves: (1) congruence, (2) respect or diversity, (3) accuracy, (4) specificity, (5) feedback for continuous improvement, (6) universality, and (7) fairness. Based on these seven principles, I would establish a standards-based accountability system. Students would rely on state common core standards as a base for academic achievement. Teachers would be instrumental in establishing a set of standards for professional excellence within the district or school site. Knowing what is expected of you is vital in establishing a cultural that not only spurs success but also nurtures effective

Are educational standards and methods of accountability an erroneous idea? Most government officials, educators, and parents would admit that educators need agreed upon guidelines to educate the present generations for the global world in which they live. Across the United States, each individual state determines the method of achieving their vision of educational success for their unique student population. The State of Alaska encountered a roadblock when the native student populations and schools could not meet the No Child Left Behind Act goals. Board of Education realized that they needed to implement educational reform in the areas of English and math due to the devastating test results of Alaskan students who were lacking the basic skills necessary for entry

I critically analyzed one of Diane’s Ravitch’s chapter Teacher’s Accountability for the course EDUC 680. As I described earlier that according to DeMarrais and LeCompte (1998), schools and teachers are responsible for reproducing the stratification of social classes and so we should consider having a curriculum to meet the needs of the disadvantages students and fill in the gaps of the differential knowledge between the advantaged and disadvantaged groups. Similarly, the neoliberalist (Apple, 2004) claims that teachers and schools should be held accountable based on standardized tests scores of the students. In both the situations, the teachers and schools should be responsible to mitigate the differences in their knowledge formation and reduce the test scores differences between the advantages and disadvantages groups based on the premises that

Ever since President George W. Bush implemented the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act in 2002, states across the nation have developed a wide array of methods to keep education systems accountable. When identifying the role the NCLB has in America’s education systems, Professor of Educational Policy Studies at the University of Arizona Jill Koyama determined that the NCLB act requires “… states [to] implement accountability systems that assess students annually and, based on those assessments, determine whether schools and districts are making adequate yearly progress” (549). Therefore, the NCLB was originally created to incentivize learning in schools which lack adequate results and to provide additional funding to these persistently low

     Accountability needs to be a community based concept. Everyone is responsible for the achievement of the students not just the students themselves.

Accountability is the commitment to answer to a constituent, superior, or customer for one’s performance, primary by reporting and/or justifying procedures and results (Firestone & Shipps, 2005). Implicitly, the power of any accountability demand is thought to determine which expectations are attended to. “Accountability imposes six demands on officials or their agents for government or public service organizations, including college and universities. First, they must demonstrate that they have used their powers properly. Second, they have to show that they are working to achieve the mission or priorities set for their office or organization. Third, they must report on their performance. Fourth, they must account for the resources they use and the outcomes they create. Fifth, they have to ensure the quality of the programs and services produced. Finally, they must show that they serve public needs.” (Burke, p.2). How to effectively cope with multiple conflicting accountabilities can be a problem for educational leaders. The coherence that some analysts have

Since the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act, there has been an increased focus on increasing student achievement and holding states and schools accountable for that student achievement (NCLB, 2001). One added requirement of the No Child Left Behind Act was the use of regular assessments to highlight weaknesses in content and the to look at the differences among different subgroups (2001). The purpose of the disaggregation and analysis of data is to inform instruction so educators can tailor learning to the needs of their students (NCLB, 2001). The Every Student Succeeds Act signed in 2015 reaffirmed the United States belief that schools should be held accountable for student

For more than a decade the mandates of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has placed enormous pressure on schools. This pressure required schools/school districts to evaluate and change the manner in which they conduct the business of education. Some of the areas that received heightened attention are; student achievement, teacher effectiveness and school accountability, all of which continue to be scrutinized. This scrutiny is not isolated to primarily one state or territory. In fact; the article Exiting Program Improvement (2014), backed this notion. The researchers in this article conducted a qualitative case study of ten (10) school principals in the state of California. At the time of this study the data demonstrated the

Jorgensen and Hoffman (2003) described how under the administration of former President George W. Bush, the law No Child-Left Behind (NCLB) was enacted to create a process of accountability for school. Even under the utopic premises, that they would close the gap on the learning process for all students based on the collection of data and the consequences for educators who does not demonstrate that their students were competent on the common learning standards adopted by the states, the law provided the first steps towards the evaluation systems that are being used by the counties throughout the states for accountability. Layton (2015) explains how former President Barack Obama signed Every Student Succeeds Act, which repels the NCLB, to give back the power to the state and local governments on the decision-making process of evaluation of the students’ learning; consequently, changing the teachers’ evaluation process.

Greene, Jay P. "Futile accountability systems should be abandoned." Education Next, vol.17, no. 3, 2017

“Accountability is the process of evaluating school performances on the basis of student performance, according to Figlio and Loeb in the online article, School Accountability. Accountability has become the main focus of education. Everyone is being held accountable. It starts with the district, then the administration, teachers, and even the students are being held more accountable than ever before. Figlio and Loeb state that, “ Accountability in Education is a broad concept that can be addressed in many ways, but the most commonly considered involves using administrative data-based mechanisms aimed at increasing student achievement.” A school improvement plan is a data-based mechanism that is written to improve school and student achievement. According to the online article, School Accountability, written by Figlio and Loeb (2011), “The most famous system, No Child Left Behind, which became famous in the United States in 2002, requires states to test students in reading and math in grades three through eight, as well as high school.” NCLB has caused accountability to become the number one priority in education and in turn has shifted our school improvement plans to put a better focus on data and standardized testing.

The purpose of this paper is to serve as a critique of the education brief entitled, “Why School Report Cards Merit a Failing Grade,” written by Kenneth R. Howe and Kevin Murray of The University of Colorado Boulder for the National Education Policy Center. The purpose of the brief was to examine the practice by state governments of developing school accountability ratings systems, which rate schools across their respective states with an A-F, report card-style grade as a form of institutional accountability in the public domain. The authors of the brief were attempting to highlight some of the purported reasons behind the creation of these systems and systematically critique those arguments to demonstrate the failing of these accountability systems to meet their intended purposes. The primary analysis comes from examining the A-F systems for validity across three areas; validity as a measure of school quality, validity as a policy instrument, and validity in terms of providing a democratic framework for measuring student success.

Hammond recognizes this and after presenting her concerns, she postulates that to achieve a greater democracy we must continue to work to “equalize access to educational opportunity”(Hammond 2010) by focusing on “five key elements: Meaningful learning goals...Intelligent reciprocal accountability systems...equitable and adequate resources...Strong professional standards and supports...Schools organized for student and teacher learning.” (Hammond 2010). Although well intentioned past federal reforms have neglected to successfully address these important goals. Darling-Hammond does her best to help us understand what policymakers and administrators need to accomplish to create a system that will be successful for the children of our country. She outlines specific issues and attempts to create a plan for moving our system forward backed by research and previously successful systems. Her plan highlighted the need to train, and support more high qualified teachers, design curriculum to promote inquiry and authentic learning environments, and refocus how we hold teachers accountable. Our education system is extremely assessment focused, and although this does provide a mode of keeping teacher 's accountable for their student 's achievement, teachers have no way of keeping policymakers accountable to school district needs. She called for a shift to a professional growth mindset and underlined the need for the government to hold themselves accountable for ensuring that there is an