Abstract
This article describes the origins and goals for this special double issue of Educational Policy, which also represents the 2013 Politics of Education Association Yearbook. We provide an overview of each of the articles that comprise this issue and discuss key themes concerning the new politics of accountability that emerge when we consider the articles collectively. These themes include (a) accountability policy has expanded the number and diversity of political actors; (b) accountability policy has contributed to shifts in traditional alliances; (c) political actors are using traditional and new strategies to influence and respond to accountability policy; (d) accountability policy has altered institutional structures and norms, shifting the distribution of power and resources; (e) accountability policy creates more accountability policy; and (f) the focus on performance- or test-based based accountability has contributed to a decline in democratic accountability.
Keywords
Based on a set of international policy research projects designed to explore “how the politics of education at site and systemic levels have been contributing to the reconstruction of accountability policies” (p. 5), the 1998 Politics of Education Association (PEA) Yearbook, edited by Reynold Macpherson, James Cibulka, David Monk, and Kenneth Wong examined the politics of accountability. In the 15 years following this publication, the nature of accountability in public schools in the United States has radically changed, largely as a result of the enactment of the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Educational Act in 2001, widely referred to as No Child Left Behind (NCLB). The defining and most controversial element of NCLB, high stakes performance accountability, has heightened the role of student outcomes for education stakeholders. Since its enactment, much of the research concerning NCLB has focused on issues related to the implementation and effectiveness of the federal law. While these issues are certainly important topics that inform practice and offer insight about how best to modify accountability policy, the intense focus on whether high stakes performance accountability works has eclipsed consideration of questions related to the politics of accountability. The purpose of this special double issue of Educational Policy, which also represents the 2013 edition of the Politics of Education Association Yearbook, is to reexamine the politics of accountability, accounting for the shifting nature and location of power and changes in the distribution in resources resulting from the enactment of new accountability policies since the first yearbook was published.
Broadly conceived, this special issue on the politics of accountability will examine “how power is being used in education to construct and discharge obligations between stakeholders” (Macpherson et al.’s, 1998, p. 216). Building on Macpherson et al.’s (1998) work, this collection of articles reveals the contemporary politics of accountability by (a) exploring how accountability policy shapes the structural and cultural norms of learning, teaching, leading, and governing of schools, (b) explaining how administrative and professional responses to accountability policy are efforts to exert power or resist power, (c) discussing how accountability policy influences federal–state, state–district, and district–school relations, structures, and distribution of power and resources, and (d) examining what values are being served by the implementation and expansion of accountability policy. On the whole, we examine how accountability policy shapes politics.
Organizational Structure and Article Summaries
This special double issue is comprised of four sections largely organized by the primary unit of analysis, level of government—national, state, and local. The authors draw on different conceptual frameworks to analyze data from different states and localities, providing insights about the political consequences of accountability policy in the United States. This organizational schema is somewhat arbitrary given that, as evident from the articles in this special issue, policies at one level of government alters the politics at another level, and there is extensive interdependence between levels of government to meet mandates of different accountability policies. In fact, changes in intergovernmental relations and alterations in the power dynamics between levels of government, particularly centralization at the state level, are arguably central elements of the new politics of accountability in education. The volume concludes with Kenneth Wong’s remarks, which consider the evolution of accountability.
Each article is written to stand alone in the discussion on the politics of accountability. However, taken as a whole, these contributions provide broader insight into the complexities of contemporary accountability politics. Having explained the origins and goals of this issue and described the organizational structure of this double issue, the next section of this article provides a summary of each of the articles. We then discuss some of the themes about the politics of accountability in education that emerge when we consider the works collectively.
Section 1: National Level
In “Educational Accountability and Policy Feedback,” McDonnell uses a policy feedback lens to point out the elements of a new politics of education that emerged in response to accountability policies. The policy feedback approach assumes that policies establish new or augment existing institutional rules and structures, which impose benefits and costs to political actors who respond by mobilizing to protect their interests. These policies also generate interpretive effects. McDonnell argues that the evolution of accountability policy and its core design elements, in conjunction with other policies such as school choice, have progressively led to shifts in interest group coalitions (e.g., a split in the Democratic Party) and new interest group strategies (e.g., teacher unions’ efforts to both limit the development or impact of policies in conflict with their interests and accommodate new policy directions). Accountability policy has also fostered complex organizational arrangements concerned with professional development, technical assistance, testing, and instructional materials. However, McDonnell contends that this expansion in the complexity and diversity of the educational delivery system has not been accompanied by sufficient development of new governance structures and capacities, especially at the local level. Expanded centralization in conjunction with local governments’ reactive politics and dependency on external providers to build capacity have led to what McDonnell concludes is “fragmented centralization” (Meyer, 1979). Additionally, McDonnell explains that accountability policies have also had interpretative effects whereby parents mobilize to oppose or alter accountability policies. Though, as McDonnell concedes, parental mobilization is currently limited. McDonnell then explains how the politics surrounding the Common Core State Standards are an example of policy feedback shaping new standards and accountability policy.
In “The Politics of Accountability: Teacher Education Policy,” Lewis and Young use Kingdon’s (1995) multiple streams framework to describe how teacher education accountability has come to be prominently featured on the federal agenda. Lewis and Young contend that the confluence of multiple factors resulted in a “perfect storm,” which drove teacher education accountability policy up the national policy agenda. They found that within the problem stream, indicators of low student achievement and feedback related to perceptions about the ineffectiveness of traditional teacher preparation programs along with two focusing events, the enactment of NCLB and RTTT, propelled interest in teacher education accountability policy. Lewis and Young reason that the mechanisms in the problem stream were not enough in and of themselves to bring attention to teacher preparation accountability policy. Rather, teacher education accountability achieved agenda status largely because of multiple mechanisms at play in the political stream. In particular, public sentiment supported the notion of accountability, and both political parties and organized interests supported the idea of accountability—though they diverged on their preferences for the form and consequences of any national accountability policies for both traditional and nontraditional teacher preparation programs. Lewis and Young conclude that the Obama administration—active in all three streams and a significant force in the political stream—was the primary factor in teacher education accountability’s agenda status. This finding suggests that federal involvement in teacher education is increasing in both frequency and scope, and educational accountability policy, in general, is growing in scope and targets.
Section 2: State Level
Rutledge, Anagnostopopulos, and Bali’s article “State Education Agencies, Information Systems, and the Expansion of State Power in the Era of Test-Based Accountability” documents findings from case studies of three states’ efforts to gather and coordinate the technology and people necessary to process test-based accountability data through statewide, longitudinal student information systems (SLSIS). As Rutledge, Anagnostopopulos, and Bali note, SLSIS are critical to test-based accountability because they collect, store, and process the data that are used to evaluate students’, teachers’, and schools’ performance. Much of the focus on SLSIS has focused on technical issues. This article discusses the implementation of SLSIS as a political matter that requires state education agencies (SEAs) to mobilize fiscal, organizational, and political resources and manage many actors (e.g., testing companies, technology vendors, state legislatures, schools, and LEAs) involved with different aspects of SLSIS (i.e., installing, operating, and utilizing SLSIS), who have competing interests. The authors draw on science and technology constructs—problematization, enrollment, and mobilization—to describe SEAs’ strategies to design, install, and operate SLSIS. They describe the challenges SEAs face with SLSIS from not only entities external to the SEA—schools, districts, and external entities assisting with technical aspects of SLSIS—but also from people and units within the agency itself. The article also shows that test-based accountability policy that is supported by SLSIS has given rise to informatic power, which is comprised of coercive power based on states’ abilities to impose incentives and sanctions and states’ control over measurement and computing technologies. This growth in informatic power has resulted in the expansion of state power. The authors point out that SLSIS are sites for challenges to informatic power as well. Notably, external consultants and vendors who provide both the technology and expertise necessary to operate SLSIS not only facilitate states’ acquisition of power but they also attempt to acquire informatic power for themselves. Furthermore, with the information in the SLSIS being used to monitor and potentially punish them with sanctions, schools and districts also have an incentive to challenge informatic power by undermining data collection (which occurs at the local level) and SEAs’ efforts to improve the capacity of SLSIS.
In “Seeking Accountability Through State-Appointed Emergency District Management,” Arsen and Mason describe the origins and early implementation of Michigan’s Local Government and School District Accountability Act of 2011 (PA 4), which allows the governor to appoint emergency managers to school districts in fiscal crisis, essentially giving the state authority to intervene in local districts. They contend that PA 4 departs from its predecessor, The Local Government Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1990 (PA 72) in three notable ways: target, goal, and level of authority. In brief, whereas PA 72 applied to school districts and other local governments, PA 4 focused on school districts. The goal of PA 72 was fiscal responsibility, yet the goal of PA 4 was fiscal accountability. Most importantly, PA 4 considerably expanded the powers of emergency managers, consequently eliminating local and professional control over a district’s education system and weakening democratic accountability. Arsen and Mason conclude that PA 4 diminishes both academic and fiscal technical accountability as well. In addition, they point out that PA 4 continues a trend of increasing centralization of education in Michigan. Their discussion of the origins of the law includes an extensive discussion of how changes in the state legislature and office of the governor (in 2010, Republicans took control of the state House of Representatives and the office of the governor; they already had control of the state Senate), municipalities, and school districts’ fiscal deficits (exacerbated by school choice policies that led to declines in enrollment in school districts), and Robert Bobb’s controversial tenure as emergency financial manager for Detroit Public Schools contributed to the enactment of PA 4. The authors’ analysis of the activities (i.e., terminating teachers, altering compensation policies, and privatizing services without input from the public) of the first three state-appointed EMs—who as the authors point out are in predominantly African American districts—leads them to characterize the EMs as having aggressive management styles. Lastly, the authors also draw attention to the fact that EMs have not been able to eliminate their respective school district’s deficits without additional assistance from the state.
Mawhinney also examines state takeovers in her article, “Reactive Sequences in the Evolution of Maryland’s Consequential Accountability Regime.” Specifically, this piece examines how federal accountability policies shaped Maryland’s political dynamics in 2006 when the Maryland State Board of Education attempted, but failed, to take over 11 Baltimore City schools. Mawhinney questions what strategies states use to mediate the tension between local control and federalized accountability. Prior to the passage of NCLB in 2002, each state had developed its own unique set of accountability policies. While some states had well-developed accountability systems in place, others were only beginning this process. Mawhinney argues that these unique histories are critical to understanding the emerging political dynamics between states and local school district. The current dynamics cannot be understood unless the process that has unfolded overtime is examined. Moreover, because the implications for the unfolding political dynamics are embedded in institutions, Mawhinney uses a historical institutionalist approach to analyze accountability politics in Maryland. By challenging and expanding on the idea of policy path dependence, Mawhinney explores the reactions and counterreactions that occurred as a result of the takeover attempt. Using a backward-forward mapping approach to analyze accounts of influences on reactions or counterreactions during and subsequent to the 13-day takeover attempt, Mawhinney provides a rich and detailed account that illuminates the political dynamics that were unleashed at the local and state levels by the federal government’s NCLB legislation. Her analysis suggests that although state–local governing cultures may mediate the evolution of state education accountability regimes, they do so in embedded sequences of reactions through which federal accountability mechanisms gain more or less tenuous purchase, and significantly, that local–state reactions reform those mechanisms.
DiMartino and Scott’s article “Private Sector Contracting and Democratic Accountability” explores how the dramatic growth in the number and diversity of private sector contracting resulting from accountability policy has diminished democratic accountability. Drawing on data derived from a case study of New York, DiMartino and Scott show that growth in the private sector has altered power dynamics whereby some institutions and groups have expanded their power while other entities have experienced a reduction in power. This change in the power structure has also altered the public’s access to decision-making processes, thereby limiting the ability of public citizens to provide input and oversight over educational policy. Adapting a typology developed by the authors in a previous work (Scott & DiMartino, 2009), DiMartino and Scott show that the Chancellor of the Board of Regents and the State Commissioner of Education set policy not only through formal mechanisms but also by establishing partners (i.e., the Regents Fellows) who exert considerable influence over policy although they are not held accountable to citizens of New York. Additionally, new political actors, notably private entities with whom New York State is contracting to develop, implement, and deliver a wide range of activities associated with accountability policy, such as Pearson and Wireless Generation, are successfully competing for influence over educational policy and in some instances, such as the education advocacy group Education Reform Now (ERN) success in lobbying for charter schools, a new teacher evaluation system and a new SLSIS, have become formidable opponents of the teachers unions. DiMartino and Scott contend that as the power of these private entities grows, both transparency and public participation in the educational policy process wanes, and concerns about to whom these private entities are accountable arise. On the whole, the authors contend that with limited capacity to enforce and regulate contracts with private entities, the state of New York is unable to provide sufficient oversight and foster democratic accountability.
Section 3: Local
In her article, “The Disproportionate Erosion of Local Control: Urban School Boards, High-stakes Accountability, and Democracy,” Trujillo moves away from debates regarding the impact of accountability on student outcomes to ask whether these policies alter the potential for democratic governance. By drawing on three conceptual lenses to judge the degree of democratic governance—collective educational goals, deliberative participation and decision making, and locally determined practices—Trujillo analyzes how, if at all, high-stakes accountability policies are related to an urban board’s potential for local, democratic control. Through an in-depth study of one urban school board, which includes interviews, observations, and document analysis, Trujillo provides a comprehensive look at how the board’s actions were shaped by accountability policies. She finds that board members embraced competitive, individualized goals for teaching and learning. To further these goals, board members adopted an autocratic style of governance where decisions were made behind closed doors and without public input. Finally, reflecting the emphasis accountability policies often place on standardization, Trujillo finds that the school board she observed centralized decision making to minimize local adaptation. Indeed, this research provides evidence that, as some have hypothesized, accountability policies intended to maximize effectiveness and efficiency may be eroding public, democratic school governance. Moreover, like many urban districts, the one examined in this study faced intense pressure about students’ test scores. Trujillo identifies the ways that this intense pressure fueled the governance choices made by board members, often serving as the justification for the elimination of democratic governance. Because low-income communities and communities of color are differentially impacted by high-stakes accountability policies, Trujillo argues, based on this study, that these communities are even more at risk of losing deliberative decision making and representation of local interests and needs. This study makes an important contribution to our understanding of the way school board politics are shaped by today’s accountability policies.
As local districts attempt to implement multiple accountability policies simultaneously, the potential for unintended effects from the interaction accountability policies rises. In “When Accountability Strategies Collide: Do Policy Changes That Raise Accountability Standards Also Erode Public Satisfaction?” Jacobsen, Snyder, and Saultz examine what happens to public opinion regarding school quality when two popular strategies are implemented in New York City. The first strategy, the public dissemination of data, provides the public with accountability data, which can then be used by interested citizens to apply pressure for improvement if performance data is deemed unsatisfactory. The second strategy, raising the bar, uses data to set performance targets and foster continuous improvement. While the authors acknowledge that each strategy has been found to improve student achievement when implemented individually, they argue that these accountability strategies may collide to produce a corrosive long-term consequence for public opinion. When the bar is raised, many schools experience a decline in achievement, as they are required to reach a new, higher standard. When both strategies are implemented together, this decline is made highly public through accountability report cards, and the public may misunderstand the drop in achievement. The resulting policy feedback may wrongly erode public satisfaction with the public schools, ultimately hindering public support for future reform. To test this possibility, Jacobsen, Snyder, and Saultz examine parent satisfaction data from the New York City Schools Survey before and after New York City raised the bar on school performance grading criteria. After the change was implemented, Jacobsen, Snyder, and Sautlz find that there was a decline in parent satisfaction. Their findings demonstrate that efforts to shape accountability data to spur continuous improvement can easily lead to public concern. Inadvertently, citizens may come to believe that there is little point in participating in or supporting the education system because they do not see positive returns for their previous investments.
In “Tensions Across Federalism, Localism, and Professional Autonomy: Social Media and Stakeholder Response to Increased Accountability,” Berry and Herrington examine how local-level actors make sense of state and federal policies and use social media outlets to voice their views. Their study extends our understanding of how local stakeholders respond to the implementation of accountability policy at the district and school level. Berry and Herrington posit that tension in federalism is especially acute at the school and district level where local leaders become the target of public ire as they attempt to carry out state and federal policy mandates. To examine how the tension plays out, Berry and Herrington examine one Florida school district’s implementation of the federal government’s differentiated accountability policy (DA). As online media continue to grow, they have increasingly become an outlet where individuals connect with others to share ideas, develop common understandings, and organize responses to policies. Analyzing this relatively new source of communication, Berry and Herrington capture the local politics of implementation of DA. Their examination of blog comments posted on a newspaper’s website highlights how social media can be used for sensemaking and mobilizing against district’s implementation of accountability policy. This study shows that the implementation of the DA policy placed local leaders in a difficult political position. As the superintendent of the district tried to support state and federal accountability policy, parents and teachers became increasingly frustrated, believing that DA undermined limited use sense of autonomy and limited their use of their professional judgment and experience to make decisions in the classroom. Berry and Herrington found that this tension at the local level detracted from the shared goal of raising student achievement. This frustration further complicated the implementation of the DA, which resulted in policy retreat by the school district. The authors suggest that to overcome some of the tension at the local level, accountability policy should account for professional knowledge and teacher autonomy.
Section 4: Evolution of Accountability Policy
This volume concludes with an article by Kenneth Wong, Politics and Governance: Evolving Systems of School Accountability. Wong discusses the new landscape and future of accountability policy.
Contemporary Politics of Accountability
Collectively, the articles in this volume identify which actors are involved in accountability policy and detail what power resources these actors draw on and in what contexts. The articles also describe the goals of these actors and highlights the strategies they use to shape and respond to accountability policy. Additionally, these articles provide insight about the institutional structures and processes that result from accountability policies enacted over the past decade. In this section, we describe key themes concerning the new politics of accountability that emerge when we consider this collection, notably (a) accountability policy has expanded the number and diversity of political actors, which plays a role in the inability of government to effectively manage itself; (b) accountability policy has contributed to shifts in traditional alliances; (c) political actors are using traditional and new strategies to influence and respond to accountability policy; (d) accountability policy has altered institutional structures and norms, shifting the distribution of power and resources; (e) accountability policy creates more accountability policy; and (f) the focus on performance- or test-based accountability has contributed to a decline in democratic accountability. Although these themes are not mutually exclusive, we will discuss them separately and identify a few corresponding examples from articles that comprise this issue.
Performance-based accountability requires the measurement, monitoring, evaluation, training, and dissemination of outcome data. To carry out these activities, states and localities have had to expand their capacity to meet performance-based accountability by creating and expanding the number and diversity of both public-private sector arrangements and intergovernmental relations. McDonnell’s article explains how this expansion in actors and relations has made it difficult for the educational system to govern itself. Whereas McDonnell points out the difficulties in implementing accountability policy that local districts experience because of their lack of capacity to implement accountability policy, Rutledge, Anagnostopopulos, and Bali’s discussion of the development and implementation of statewide, longitudinal student information systems (SLSIS) draws our attention to the challenges states face when implementing accountability policy. Their multi–case study shows that state education agency staff who oversaw SLSIS had difficulty managing the competing interests of the various actors both inside and outside of the SEA. The lack of government’s ability to control private actors, in particular, is detailed in DiMartino and Scott’s case study of the state of New York. For example, DiMartino and Scott find that New York State had difficulty holding private contractors, such as Pearson and Wireless Generation, accountable.
Another element of the new politics of accountability is a realignment of coalitions, notably the split within the Democratic Party around issues related to accountability and other policies, such as charter schools described by McDonnell; tension between teacher unions and neoliberal Democrats, including the Obama administration, who support teacher and teacher education accountability policies related by both McDonnell and Lewis and Young; and division among interests concerned with traditional teacher preparation programs around teacher education accountability policy initiatives as described by Lewis and Young.
Teachers and teacher unions, in particular, have suffered significant challenges to their power to influence policy. In response, teachers and teachers unions have relied on traditional and nontraditional influence strategies. For example, in the case of the state of New York, teachers unions used PAC spending and lobbying, though unsuccessfully according to DiMartino and Scott, and they initiated lawsuits and supported referendums in Michigan as shown in Arsen and Mason’s analysis. Teachers and teachers unions also used new strategies, such as participating in discussions on reform in Colorado and Washington, D.C., which McDonnell points out; and, as shown by Berry and Herrington, posting comments on social media outlets in Florida to criticize the implementation of DA, which they believed was stripping them of their professional autonomy and eliminating their ability to use their expertise to inform instructional decisions.
Lewis and Young note that like the teachers unions, organizations representing the interests of teacher educators also participated in the development and marketing of the very accountability policies that would alter how they operate and to whom and for what they are accountable. Lewis and Young contend that being at the table to discuss reforms would allow traditional teacher preparation programs to minimize the inclusion of content in conflict with their interest by diluting or eliminating undesirable elements of proposed initiatives. While not suggested by any of these authors, we contend that participating in the creation of policy also potentially has another advantage, positive publicity. Teachers, traditional teacher education programs, and teacher unions have endured an onslaught of attacks, even being accused of undermining reforms aimed at improving student achievement to advance their own interests. By participating in the formation of policy, these groups shift attention away from the rhetoric that accuses them of contributing to the problem of low student achievement to being viewed as actively engaged in crafting solutions to raise student achievement.
Accountability has also created new norms of governance and altered power structures. By and large, these studies find that accountability policy is the most significant factor in increasing centralization of education policy, especially at the state level. Although the federal government enacted NCLB, the responsibility for implementing mandates was ultimately at the state level. Many states had their own accountability policies in place prior to NCLB, however, the extensive requirements of NCLB ratcheted up state centralization of educational policy. As McDonnell points out, NCLB allowed states to expand their influence over local school districts. Mawhinney’s narrative account of Maryland’s failed attempt to overtake Baltimore City Public Schools and Rutledge, Anagnostopopulos, and Bali’s description of districts’ low prioritizing of data for the SLSIS and lobbying against the expansion of SLSIS highlight both states’ efforts to expand their power around accountability policy and local district’s resistance to this expansion. Arsen and Mason’s discussion of PA 4 in Michigan represents another example of state’s building on NCLB to increase their authority in local districts. However, unlike the case in Baltimore, the state of Michigan successfully expanded their authority by allowing the state to appoint EMs to districts in fiscal distress. These EMs exercise broad authority (e.g., modifying and terminating district contracts with employees and external vendors, hiring and firing of teachers, and closing schools) without any local accountability. Local districts do not necessarily resist federal mandates or state policy. In the school districts described by Trujillo and Berry and Herrington, the local education agencies supported accountability policy. These studies also show that although accountability has fostered centralization, states are still ultimately dependent on the local districts to implement accountability policy.
Accountability policy has also led to the creation of additional accountability policy. States and local districts are establishing new policies to implement existing accountability policies. In the case of Detroit, the fiscal accountability policy, PA 4, that Arsen and Mason analyze, was intended to support not only fiscal responsibility but also promote academic achievement to meet federal mandates in accountability policy. Additionally, as Berry and Herrington discuss, some accountability policies are a response to previous accountability policies. Differentiated accountability policy (DA) was established to address perceived flaws and undesirable consequences associated with NCLB. Furthermore, accountability policy is increasing in scope, and outcomes of existing accountability policy are creating opportunities for new accountability policy. These dynamics are especially evident in the case of teacher education accountability policy. According to Lewis and Young, teacher education accountability policy demonstrates a willingness of the federal government to expand the targets of accountability, thereby extending the scope of accountability policy. Second, teacher education accountability policy is not only an extension of the discussion of teacher quality and accountability at the primary and secondary level, but was also made possible by SLSIS that were put in place to support accountability policy. What is clear from this growth in accountability policy is that, as McDonnell asserts, accountability has been instutionalized. What remain unclear, as Jacobsen, Snyder, and Saultz note, are the long-term consequences associated with the interplay of multiple accountability policies.
Finally, while some of the rhetoric around accountability policies implies that holding schools accountable for student achievement has only recently been enacted, public schools have always been accountable to someone for something. What has changed, however, is the type of accountability being enacted. The traditional form of accountability, democratic accountability through locally elected school boards, is being supplanted by performance-based accountability through state and federal monitoring. However, these two forms of accountability are not necessarily incompatible. As Jacobsen, Snyder, and Saultz point out, publicly available accountability data may enable the public to better hold its schools and elected leaders accountable by providing clear, comparable data. Additionally, the research findings from Berry and Herrington and McDonnell demonstrate how parents mobilize in response to accountability policies, although the response is sometimes small.
While there are cases of public engagement, several articles in the volume also document the ways that accountability policies diminish, or even remove entirely, democratic accountability. Jacobsen, Snyder, and Saultz find that current policies may lead individuals to become dissatisfied with the schools and thus withdraw their support. Additionally, the research by Trujillo and DiMartino and Scott shed light on the ways that accountability policies led to governance arrangements that limited public input and decreased the ability of the people to monitor and assess school leaders’ performance. Trujillo’s analysis of one urban school board demonstrates the ways in which performance-based accountability pressures led school board members to abandon public discussions in favor of closed-door decision making. DiMartino and Scott similarly find that pressures to meet the demands of accountability policies in New York State led to increased private-sector contracting, which decreased the public’s access to the decision-making process. In fact, the authors conclude that it is unclear to whom these private entities are accountable since even the state of New York seems unable to hold them accountable. In the most overt attack on democratic governance, PA4 in Michigan, as explained by Arsen and Mason, was designed specifically to eliminate traditional forms of democratic governance in the name of accountability. Under PA4, the Michigan governor can appoint an emergency manager (EM) with unilateral decision making regarding school policies and completely replace publicly elected school board members.
The ability of the public to have a voice in decisions related to education policy is critical to maintaining public support for and engagement with the public education system. Yet, as several pieces in this volume have shown, accountability policies pose a significant threat to maintaining this support. Moreover, as Trujillo and Arsen and Mason note, these threats are not equally distributed across all school districts. Rather, communities that have historically been denied a voice (e.g., communities of color and low-income communities) are those most likely to face the pressures from accountability policies that place them at greater risk for losing access to decision making. To paraphrase Plank and Boyd (1994), the governance arrangements emerging as a result of the pressures created by accountability policies may create schools that are more efficient and may produce students with higher test scores, but not schools that are democratic. This trade-off must be carefully considered as scholars examine the new politics of accountability.
Overall, we believe that these works have demonstrated how accountability policy has altered the politics of education. We thank all authors whose work appears in this special issue and our peers, who provided thoughtful reviews of the initial drafts of each manuscript. We hope that those who read this volume will better understand that accountability policy over the past decade has shaped the politics of education.
Footnotes
Authors’ Note
Names have been listed in alphabetical order. Both coeditors have made equal contributions to this article and this volume, which represents the 2013 Politics of Education Association Yearbook and a special double issue of Educational Policy.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Author Biography
References
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