Accountability in Education

"Standard-based accountability" has become a consistent buzzword emanating from the mouths of hopeful politicians-liberal and conservative-for almost twenty years. But does accountability work? The New Accountability explores the current wave of assessment-based school accountability reforms, which combine two traditions in American education-public accountability and student testing.

Describes accountability models in the manufacturing, job training, legal, and health care sectors; summarizes their effectiveness; and draws specific lessons for educators.

Examining the state of the art in achievement testing and how testing and accountabiltiy can be used most effectively to promote positive educational outcomes.

Do audit cultures deliver greater responsibility, or do they stifle creative thought?We are all increasingly subjected to auditing, and alongside that, subject to accountability for our behaviour and actions. Audit cultures pervade in the workplace, our governmental and public institutions as well as academia. However, audit practices themselves have consequences, beneficial and detrimental, that often go unexamined.This book examines how pervasive practices of accountability are, the political and cultural conditions under which accountability flourishes and the consequences of their application. Twelve social anthropologists look at this influential and controversial phenomenon, and map out the effects around Europe and the Commonwealth, as well as in contexts such as the European Commission, the International Monetary Fund and Academic institutions. The result provides an excellent insight into auditing and its dependence on precepts of economic efficiency and ethical practice. This point of convergence between these moral and financial priorities provides an excellent opening for debate on the culture of management and accountability.

Defending Public Schools addresses the historical, current, and future context of public schools in the United States. While the essays provide an overview of education and schooling issues, the overarching concern is that public schools are under attack and deserve to be defended.