"Accountability." The context: schools. The crisis: failure to educate students causing them to not achieve at the academic levels they should with a gap in achievement to prove it. But who's getting called for the penalty of shortchanging students? The current movement in education has shifted on holding the powerful and institutions accountable for school failure to now making teachers responsible; in the event of default, redress in review form could mean being fired despite the number of years a teacher has been in the classroom.

The end goal of accountability, or so we are told, is the salvation of schools in the interest of transforming learning for children, particularly Black, Latino and economically disadvantaged children in urban areas. Critics of the sweeping overhaul taking shape in public education that restricts teacher collaborative bargaining rights, eliminates tenure and changes how educators are evaluated and paid might argue differently; perhaps, they [critics armed with Tozer, Violas & Senese's analytical framework] would suggest, what is currently going on with and in educational policy is not at all about being accountable to and for the children. If test scores and evaluation changes that "award good teachers and get rid of less effective ones" are not about better preparing children academically then what exactly is going on? Is there just cause for caution and skepticism on the part of educational policy critics?
Behind the disguise of educational rhetoric like "teacher accountability," the skeptic would aver, is the
face of corporate enterprise and labor. The source of the outcomes-based accountability reform framework that ties student test score data to teacher evaluation, the critical analyst would say, is located in
neo-liberal ideology [Tozer et al.'s framework at work]. Not sure what neo-liberalism is? Just think of it this way, privitization. Yes, another word we are regularly hearing in circulation where debates and conversations around educational policy are being had. But what is privitization exactly? Glad you asked. Privitization of the public sphere is when the space of the public gets taken over by the private. In addition to the public becoming private, neo-liberal ideology necessitates extreme cutbacks in expenditures for social services - education and social security are but a couple of examples, corporate deregulation by government, organized labor gets assaulted, so forth and so on. These demands, and others like them, are what is called the politics of neo-liberalism. Now do you get neo-liberal ideology, even if only a little bit? Are you starting to formulate the possible connections between student test score data, teacher evaluation and corporations? Good.
To continue, the raison detre of the market into education is being driven by neo-liberal politics. The framework of neo-liberal ideology provides an understanding of how the use of test score data as criterion to evaluate teachers is linked to the underlying principles - organizational goals, objectives and outcomes - of business and, emphatically I might add, are
NOT about, or even remotely in, the interest of the children. Although when queried, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan's rhetorical spin frames it more as school districts' way of "thinking very differently about teacher evaluation and making it meaningful." Despite Duncan's twist on teacher evaluation reform, it appears the critics may perhaps be judicious in their caution and skepticism afterall. Requiring that educators be judged - given tenure and raises or fired - based largely on student test scores, works to the benefit of the market, businesses and the wealthy who control them; policies like the Impact Evaluation System. in NY create schools that, given the above context, boil down to being no more than labor recruitment facilities.
We know from empirical research that
high-stakes testing has a measurable impact and broad reach. And make no mistake about what is meant by measurable impact and broach reach. Research now shows that the
effect and reach of standards-based testing is quite deleterious. That is because when the only thing of import for a school, a district or a teacher is how well students perform on a test - because purse strings are bound to the outcomes - curriculum narrows quickly. The pressure to perform, and perform well I might add, intensifies; tests easily take the center of teaching and learning.
When tests take center stage in education and the curriculum narrows it breeds a stratified system - stratified access to knowledge, to jobs and careers, to income and life outcomes. It is becoming clear for you, is it not, how new evaluation policies, which are required by our current Mr. POTUS' Race to the Top program, force teachers to fall in-line with the neo-liberal formulation of education policy that serves corporate and elite interests and undermines the opportunity of subgroups of students, namely low-income, Black and Latino students, to develop critical habits of mind and abilities to be productive members of a democratic nation? [See: Arends et al., Ch. 9: Schools and society [excerpt]."
Exploring teaching. Boston: McGraw Hill, 1998. 289-291.]
Those critical of the neo-liberal system of accountability, which is making master bubble fillers of students, see the test as being about work and labor preparedness. Through testing, students are trained, not educated, to fill positions consistent with their status [what is the purpose of education again? Tozer et al. discuss the difference of training and education while Arends et al. consider school's purpose and aims]. Charlene Tan's conception of indoctrination is worth thinking about as we think about what exactly it is students are trained to do [Additionally, we not only should start to think about Taylor and social efficiency as an education framework but also this pattern of schooling should bring to mind Jefferson's belief that education has a sorting function; Spring also discusses the relationship between sorting and testing].
Both, Obama and Duncan, speak passionately about a concern for students not being able to compete in the global economy, but have they for a moment considered how many of these same students, under their administration's policies, will not be prepared to "compete" in the national economy? When student test score data meets teacher evaluation, Black, Latino and economically disadvantaged students pay with their futures. High-stakes testing alone, but definitely taken together with teacher evaluation, darkens these students' prospects at social mobiity and political equity [Tozer et al has done it again with their analytic framework; this time it's the political economy that speaks].

This critical analysis is not stopping states from riding the wave of teacher "accountability" measured by student performance data. Many states have had to take drastic cuts due to the economic crisis; for those states RTTT dollars and the consequent adoption of neo-liberal politics matter more than ensuring that disproportionate numbers of disadvantaged students are educated to become critical thinkers capable of changing the societal injustices they now face as students. And so the cycle will repeat with yet another generation.
To-date the promotion of corporate culture in education prevails. The dominant narrative of major media outlets, television and print, continues to mask the "hidden-agenda," much like how the "hidden-curriculum" operates in schools, behind linking educator compensation, promotion and firing to student test scores. Sadly enough, although the practice of standards-based testing is very undemocratic in that it does not promote the critical consciousness of Freire or the active learning of Dewey, the media remains fettered to its position of encouraging the public to embrace market-driven educational practices. [See: "
The Service of Democratic Education" by Darling-Hammond to understand what democratic education is; also see: Arends et al., Ch. 9: Schools and society [excerpt]."
Exploring teaching. Boston: McGraw Hill, 1998. 289-291.]
In case you did not know, they too - major media, is in the pocket of corporations and Foundations as well. What a coincidence, hmph... [Remember Miner's piece, "The Ultimate Superpower: Supersized dollars drive Waiting for Superman agenda" and the discourse on who owns Viacom? Should we not think that outlets like CNN, MSNBC, FOX etc exist primarily through corporate and elite individual's support?]