Test-based accountability: The best we can do?
Who doesn’t want accountability in education? That was the selling point for No Child Left Behind (NCLB). It was the selling point for the Massachusetts Education Reform Act (MERA) of 1993. It was even a selling point for Finnish reforms in teacher education in 1970.
But how did Congress and most of our education researchers and policy makers get frozen into thinking that test-based accountability is the only kind of accountability?
There are other forms of accountability—and maybe, just maybe, another form of accountability, or even hybrids of existing forms, might lead to gains in U.S. student achievement, if indeed that is a goal of accountability (i.e., to ensure that federal taxpayers are getting something worthwhile for their money).
Improved student achievement was the goal of MERA in 1993. Schools and school districts were held accountable. (The “grand bargain” was money for more effective schools.) Over the next decade, many changes took place in public education, including increased funding, “revised learning standards,” “revised student assessments based on clear curriculum frameworks,” and “revised teacher licensing.”
These reforms eventually did lead to increased levels of achievement for all groups of kids, even though average differences in achievement between groups were not closed after 10 to 15 years. (Closing achievement gaps was not a goal of MERA; improving academic achievement for all students was.)
Gains in student achievement were a goal of Finnish reforms in 1970. Professional accountability is how Helen Ladd describes the Finnish version of accountability. Schooling was restructured (enrollment in a free upper secondary school—vocational or academic—was encouraged, even though students could legally leave school after grade 9); teachers’ academic quality and teacher education were academically upgraded; and teachers in grades 1 to 9 were in charge of their school’s curriculum, with minimum guidance from a central ministry of education and no state-mandated testing in grades 1 to 9. See this review for details.
And gains it did lead to, for large numbers of children—not for all, and not without some problem Test-based accountability: The best we can do? | NewBostonPost: