Moving beyond “Good/Bad” Student Accountability Measures: Multiple Perspectives of Accountability

This article examines three student accountability measures through two different theoretical perspectives: structural functionalism and feminist post-structuralism. The analysis reveals how educators can use various kinds of student assessments, whether typically categorized as traditional or progressive, in both structural functional or feminist poststructural ways—ways that maintain the status quo or support equity and justice for all students. We claim and show that it is not the assessment itself, per se, that is the issue. Rather, it is how we use them that can determine their effects on students. The purpose of this article is to help practicing administrators and scholars in administrator preparation programs to move beyond an either/or view of differing accountability measures, beyond resignation or criticism of the issue of accountability, and consider new questions about and possibilities for the dialogue.