Texas-Style School Accountability: Rewarding the “Best” Schools?
Texas is considered a leader in state accountability systems in the nation. Indeed, George W. Bush touted school accountability as the primary driver of the Texas Miracle of the 1990s. Ultimately, this fondness for school accountability Texas-style led to the basic framework of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)–President Bush’s signature education reform effort. While many have critiqued the very existence of the Texas Miracle and make a number of very valid points, this post focuses on the current version of Texas style school accountability which is not much different from the original version implemented in 1993.
While there are a large number of problems with the general notion of school accountability and the Texas school accountability system in particular, this post assumes that accountability systems will not disappear in the near future, thus such systems must be as fair as possible. Again, this post is making a very narrow critique. There are many other valid critique such as an incentive to teach to the test that I will explore in a futur