Accountability is not just about improving instruction. It aims to shift local politics, too.
A few weeks ago, my colleague Robert Pondiscio argued convincingly that the accountability policies of the No Child Left Behind era did not work as effectively as they could have because schools did not know how to respond to the pressure they felt to improve instructional practice and deliver stronger results. I think that’s right and, as Robert argued, that’s why leading states discovered that they needed to provide help, and in some cases mandates, to get schools to adopt approaches that would actually improve student performance and narrow achievement gaps. Robert wrote:
The states and districts showing the strongest results today are not those that abandoned accountability. Nor are they those that relied on accountability alone. They are the ones that paired accountability with coherent instructional strategies, high-quality curricula, teacher support, and a clearer understanding of how children learn. Mississippi’s literacy gains did not emerge from testing by itself. Neither did the progress seen in places like Louisiana or, more recently, Houston. Accountability provided urgency and focus. It did not provide the instructional playbook.
I agree with all that, and it’s in line with some things I’ve written about the need to marry accountability with greater capacity building, as some standards-based reformers have long urged.
But it’s important to point out that directly improving instructional practice wasn’t all that NCLB in particular, and consequential accountability in general, were about. They were also trying to shift the local politics of education. That’s why many consider NCLB to have been a civil rights effort as well.
