Accountability for promoting democracy: replacing a movement fueled by economics and politics with an alternative--"responsibilism".

An ominous title, and a bit exaggerated, perhaps--but I wonder what is becoming of childhood and young adulthood these days, especially in the context of public schooling and the high-stakes testing and accountability mania now apparently in store for children at nearly every grade level. Not that being bombarded by standardized testing is new. It's just that the current incarnation of mindless accountability regimen has scaled it up to record levels.

Opposition has emerged from all corners, including both right and left on the political spectrum. It's hard to know who your bedfellows really are. Some are likely those who still see this as outcomes-based education and the work of the devil, intruding into family values and responsibilities. Others find the high-stakes accountability testing and accountability strategies just plain stupid and contrary to what they believe good teaching, learning and assessment ought to be about.

Exemplifying the latter kind of opposition, for example, is Mothers Against WASL in my home state. WASL is the Washington Assessment of Student Learning, currently given at the 4th, 7th, and 10th grades, with what the state considers "reaching standard" at the 10th grade to be required for high school graduation in 2008.

Construction of additional assessments is already under way for all the other grades required by NCLB. The Mothers group is outraged. You can gain a sense of their concerns on their website (www.juanita2004spi.com/ mothersagainstwasl) and from the slogans on the buttons they sell: "No Child Left Untested," "Trickle-Down Education," "My Child is Not Your Data," There's No Such Thing as a 'Standard' Child," and "Choose the best answer: a. test, b. teach."

This is not a wacko group. Its members have compiled a fair amount of thoughtful information and recommendations on their website. I sympathize with many of their concerns and find them consistent with what we have known about heavy-handed accountability systems for the last several decades or more.

Ideas Revisited

The problem, however, is not the test per se, but the accountability system and its logic. The WASL is a pretty good test of reading, writing, mathematics and science, consistent with fairly demanding content standards. As a teacher, I could make good use of it (and other assessment tools) as part of good instruction in the classroom. But when such tests are used instead as political hammers--and children, teachers, schools and families become the nails with the future of public education perhaps in the coffin--I and others become really concerned.

Although the belief in carrot-and-stick plus threat of punishment approaches to changing human behavior is centuries old, we can mark the mid- to-late '60s as about the time such methods became the mantra for federal and state policy enthusiasts. Check out, for example, the associate U.S. commissioner of education at the time, Leon Lessinger's Every Kid a Winner, a rhetorically identical but positive version of a more contemporary document, No Child Left Behind.

Lessinger puts forward in 1970 an ideology of accountability that pretty much holds sway to the present day: Poor kids and inner-city schools are in trouble; the nation needs an educated workforce; and the way to turn things around is with measurable outcomes and bringing scientific knowledge and technology to bear upon the problem. Thus the centerpiece of Nixon's educational address in 1970 was "another new concept--accountability."

Critiques at the time were also strikingly similar to those of the present. One of the most thoughtful was the 1975 book by Don Martin, George Overholt and Wayne Urban, Accountability in American Education: A Critique. Their conclusion regarding what they termed "accountabilist" ideology is interesting to read in the current context of NCLB: "Our examination of the accountability movement has led us to conclude that it is not an educational but rather political movement fueled by economic concerns. Economic and political forces provide the main thrust behind the movement that has attracted many who really believe that it will improve education. These forces aim to hold down costs at all levels of education while at the same time striving to maintain the economic and political status quo, complete with all its present inequities."

One is left to say, "The more things change, the more they stay the same." This aphorism might even be a source of some comfort if it were not for the predictable and harmful fallout of accountabilist theory and practice fallout that continues to plague disproportionately those very students about whom accountabilists profess concern. This hypocrisy is palpable in rhetoric that calls out for equalizing student outcomes, on the one hand, yet is conspicuously silent on the extraordinary inequities in a still racist and classist society within which we still try to conduct the great American experiment of public schooling.

Harmful Impact

The harmful fallout of high-stakes testing is obvious notwithstanding the smoke screens of proclaimed successes: teacher and administrator demoralization and attrition over frustration with mandated testing for high-stakes accountability; negative reactions of students and parents; court challenges based on unequal opportunities to learn; increased dropout rates of students, particularly economically poor children and children of color; narrowing educational curriculum and pedagogical practices to just those things tested and how they are tested; retaining students in grades with all the demonstrated negativity associated with that practice; and making unwarranted and invalid assumptions about students' abilities, learning needs and even their futures (as in high school graduation testing).

Once again, the children and youth who are really hurt most by all this continue to be those in poorer communities and communities of color in grossly underfunded and poorly staffed schools. The trend toward state takeovers of failing schools is ill-conceived and has no empirical warrant. There is no way that reasonable arguments can be made that students in such systems have equal opportunities to learn. And it may well be that this argument will ultimately win the day in court. We should keep a watchful and hopeful eye, for example, on the American Civil Liberties Union's efforts on the case of Williams et al. v. State of California.

So don't believe the political hype about having entered a new age of accountability or that now, suddenly, we have the evidence base for the achievement gap. Anybody who actually believes this is either too young, too naive or has been Rip Van Winkle since the studies by sociologist James Coleman in the mid '60s. Whether we talk objectives or standards, minimum competency or world-class, the core, accountabilist ideology continues to hold promise for test-driven changes in teaching and learning, and rewards or punishments (high stakes) to alter behaviors of educators and their students who apparently wouldn't do so otherwise.

Remarkably absent in this ideology is the need for ongoing professional development so prevalent (and costly) in the corporate world. And remarkably implicit is the pernicious assumption that many schools, educators and children can make great changes unfettered by the inequitable and often miserable conditions and circumstances within which they exist, try to teach and try to learn.

Accountabilist Talk

I hope readers don't misunderstand me. I am not trying to lay the blame for the achievement gap on the kids, their families or their communities. Nothing could be further from my true beliefs. In fact, I believe schools can do far more than they have with their present resources and in their present conditions, and we have examples of this ever since the school effectiveness studies in the '70s.

I have absolutely no patience with teachers who lower expectations for children based on their race, ethnicity, class, gender or disability. Such educators ought to be fired and unions have no business protecting them. School and district administrators who see their jobs only as managers and not as educational leaders with clear commitments to equity and excellence--not just in words but in action--ought to find work elsewhere as well. And so should education professors who do not deliberately and actively build these values directly into their programs for preparing future educators. I have the utmost respect and hold great hopes for educators who are taking on the challenge of closing or at least trying to narrow the achievement gap.

Don't get me wrong when I continue to harp on what I see as hypocrisy or just plain wrong-headedness in current (and past) accountabilist talk. It seems clear to me that, in the larger scheme of things, the inequities that mark our most troubled schools demonstrate that racism and classism are still alive and functioning in our social fabric and thus in today's (and likely tomorrow's) schools.

Ironically, the rhetoric of "closing the achievement gap" has been picked up by both the conservative right which may be more interested in privatizing public schools by showing continued failure to close the gap and by the liberal left, which believe that high-stakes testing and accountability is the only way to keep demonstrating the gap and therefore putting pressure on schools to do something about it.

What truly needs closing Is the "rhetorical gap," the gap between urging the closure of the gap and the commitment of the enormous resources it would take to ameliorate the pernicious outcomes of poverty, racism and discrimination. And committing and distributing these resources requires giving far more to the schools and communities that need them the most--a likely unpopular notion among folks who need the resources the least.

I suppose that by virtue of the same critique here of traditional accountability--its record of longevity and failure--so goes the record of those like me who continue our own critiques. Perhaps the only comfort is in staying the course and maintaining the dialectic.

But perhaps not. Perhaps part of the failure to overcome the lure of traditional accountability practices is the failure to offer truly viable alternatives--not that some haven't tried. The hard fact of the matter, however, is that there are no easy alternatives. Part of the attractiveness of accountabilist ideology is its educational and political simplicity: consequences (high stakes), easy to obtain evidence (testing); behavioralizing outcomes (or standards and performance, if you prefer); and laying the whole of the responsibility on the doorsteps of schools as if they existed in a social, political and economic vacuum.

Nonetheless, until the educational community (preK through higher education) finds persuasive alternatives to account for what goes on in public schooling, we are likely stuck in this cycle of accountabilism, predictable fallout and predictable critique. So where do we go from here?

Six Beliefs

One possibility is to figure out how to sell an alternative ideological perspective--one that might be called "responsibilism." This is going to be a hard sell because it would need to be authentically rooted in beliefs more consistent with a more just and equitable democratic society and political system, with what we know about good teaching and learning and with the educational needs of students and their families, particularly in economically poor communities and in communities of color. I and others have put forward this case in our just-published book, Holding Accountability Accountable. I can only sketch out the framework here.

* First, public education must play a vital role in our pluralistic and democratic society.

The survival of a democracy depends on a participating, educated and critically minded citizenry. Our public education system must therefore guarantee an equitable and empowering education for all the nation's youth, and our federal, state and local policies must support and nurture the schools in this effort by helping to create and sustain the conditions and circumstances within which the guarantee can be realized.

* Second, the functions of public education must be construed broadly to encompass the character and competencies of fully educated human beings, capable of filling multiple roles in our social and political democracy.

Although schools must attend to career opportunities for all students, solely utilitarian or economic narratives should not control the purposes of schooling. There is no better preparation for the future than preparing for lifelong learning in the present.

* Third, government and the public have a right to know how well children are faring in our public education systems.

To be accountable, according to the American Heritage College Dictionary, is to be "liable to being called into account; answerable." Those responsible for educating our children, therefore, must be called into account by parents, communities, the state and perhaps even the nation, assuming these groups are willing to support what is necessary for appropriate and responsible educational conditions and practices.

* Fourth, just as educators need to be held accountable, so do policymakers and the public as a whole for the validity of the educational accountability systems they establish and the social and political conditions within which they expect these systems to work.

A society that is still marked by substantial racism and classism cannot expect just and equitable public schools no matter how much imploring about better leadership, better teaching and closing the achievement gap. Schools and society are inexorably bound together. Improving both requires the will and work to make both better.

* Fifth, the distribution of resources in response to school- and community-based needs is not a fiscally or morally neutral event.

Taking a moral stance will require the courage to operate on the principle that "equal is not necessarily equitable" and that substantially more resources will have to be distributed to the least-advantaged schools and communities.

* Finally, accountability and responsibility must go hand in hand.

Responsibility includes accountability but also includes more layered meanings centered on being able to make moral or rational decisions, being trustworthy or dependable or reliable and showing good judgment. To be both responsible and accountable demands that we care deeply about the well-being of our children and that we bring the best ideas, knowledge, practices and professional judgments to bear on the education of future citizens.

Responsible Ecology

These beliefs and others like them can form a foundation upon which to build more responsible practices for calling into account ourselves as a social and political democracy, the political infrastructure supporting public schooling and the system of schooling itself. On this foundation can be built an ecology of responsible people and practices that make good use of what we know about good education.

This might include, for example, using multiple sources and types of information, primarily in the classroom, to evaluate both teachers and students; accommodating and promoting powerful ways to address the individual and developmental needs of every child and young adult; eliminating inequitable and unproductive teaching and learning conditions and practices (such as large class and school sizes and tracking); creating genuine learning communities and meaningful professional development for all educators; using trust and goodwill (instead of the threat of punishment) to change human behavior; and remembering that changing human behavior is, and always has been, a long-term proposition.

These beliefs and practices can inform a "responsible ecology" of accountable groups that must operate on two simultaneous fronts: the day-to-day efforts to improve significantly the education of children in schools and the concerted efforts of educators and their constituencies to demand that the political infrastructure dramatically alter its priorities and invest the necessary resources where they are needed most to do the job well.

For example, states need to set global educational goals but then fund substantially ongoing professional development and a quality teacher in every classroom, significantly smaller schools and class sizes, and the necessary resources for high quality learning environments (building, technology, materials, etc.) in all schools.

Moreover, states in collaboration with professional educator associations must implement substantive auditing processes that are flexible enough to allow for local variability yet strong enough to identify problematic districts and schools. Several major features should characterize such auditing processes. They should:

* Be developed collaboratively with educators and their communities and should not be based on high-stakes testing schemes and aggregated data.

* Be based on coordinated site visitations by teams of educational professionals and public representatives who are adequately versed in using case study methods designed to really understand each school.

* Focus on the school's community, families and students; its teachers, teaching and opportunities for learning; its conditions and circumstances (physical plant, resources and student mobility); its educational goals and means of assessing them; and its information to suggest how well it is doing for each individual student under its care.

Moral Concerns

Districts and schools need to focus their resources on professional development, teaching, learning and assessment with particular attention paid to issues of equity and opportunities to learn for all students. Districts and schools also need to work with their local communities to set educational goals and accountability strategies that are comprehensive and meaningful.

Real people are involved here; they have real hopes and human desires. These hopes and desires are varied, but there will be remarkable consistency and congruence across schools, districts and even states. And there are good examples over the last decade or so of truly alternative assessment and accountability practices based on the professional judgments of educators, a rich and broad curriculum, and the individual merits of every student.

The devil is in the details, of course, but it is a devil worth confronting. It is easy to get pessimistic, even cynical, each time the accountabilist bandwagon makes its rounds onto the educational scene. We are now entering the familiar stage where researchers and policymakers will be arguing about whether accountability works, often coming to opposite conclusions based on the same set of test score data.

In my view, debates about whether high-stakes testing and accountability work cannot be resolved by looking at outcomes based on high-stakes tests. The issues at stake are far deeper than that, and arguments based on test scores will diminish considerably serious moral and pedagogical concerns. A test score is a mighty poor indicator of a human being's potential to become all that he or she can be, and we must never forget what the business we are in is about.

For the sake of our children, and all the good teachers and administrators out there, we must keep the conversation going and keep inventing new and promising alternative practices for appraising our children and their schools.

Kenneth Sirolnik was a professor of educational leadership and policy studies at the University of Washington. He died of cancer in January at age 61. He most recently edited Holding Accountability Accountable (Teachers College Press).