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Accountability
Assessment and accountability are essential to successful public schooling, and everyone has a role in creating good schools where every student routinely demonstrates high academic achievement. Communities must play an important role in this process, but state imposed assessment and accountability systems have proliferated in recent years, built largely on the threat of adverse consequences for those who fail to perform up to expectations as measured by standardized tests.
A good state accountability system should impose expectations on everyone who is part of the educational venture, and should be sensitive to local contexts. Communities should be supported in developing criteria for judging their schools, and these judgments should count in any reckoning the state gives about schools. Student achievement should be measured in many ways and responsibility for decisions about a student's grade level, placement in classes, or graduation should be left in the hands of local decision-makers who consider the full range of evidence. When a child fails to make progress, the causes of that failure need to be identified and remedied. While social promotion is bad, recidivist educational malpractice is worse.
--from "An Invitation to Discuss Assessment and Accountability in Public Schools"
Center for Children and Education
RESEARCH
Oct 02 - No Child Left Behind: Is It Worth It for Vermont?
Mar 02 - An Invitation to Discuss Assessment and Accountability: A Draft Policy Statement of the Rural School and Community Trust
Dec 00 - Monitoring School Quality: An Indicators Report
Jun 00 - How States Can Hold Schools Accountable: The Strong Schools Model of Standards-Based Reform (Brooks)
Jul 99 - Education Accountability in 50 States, a Report from ECS
Dec 98 - Parent Participation, School Accountability and Rural Education: The Impact of KERA on Kentucky School Facilities Policy
Jan 98 - The Political Legacy of School Accountability Systems (Sherman Dorn, EPAA Vol. 6, No. 1)
LINKS
American Association of School Administrators: Tracking Federal Rural Legislation
FairTest: The National Center for Fair & Open Testing
Aug 03 - School Double Standards (St. Peterburg Times 8/3/03
Jun 03 - Anne Lewis Article 'Accountability on the Backs of Rural Children'
May 03 - Courts Rule Charter Schools Don't Have to be Held to Same Accountability as Public Schools
Feb 03 - Diary of a Rural School Leader: Assessments and All that Jazz
Jan 03 - Diary of a Rural School Leader: Hunting, Mole Parties and Canterbury Tales
Dec 02 - Rural School Leader "Diary" Column Debuts Online
Aug 02 - North Carolina Court Update
May 02 - New Hampshire Schools: Adequate and Accountable?
Apr 02 - Draft Accountability Statement for Public Review and Comment
Feb 02 - Standards and Testing: Where Does Place-Based Learning Fit In?
Feb 01 - Parents Say No to High Stakes
Dec 00 - Making the Best Better: Developing a Portfolio-based Assessment System
Nov 00 - California Suit Addresses State Responsibilities
Oct 00 - Groups Build Grassroots Leadership in the Southeast
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