Understanding Accountability
©Randy L. Hoover, Ph.D.
1999The word "accountability" has certainly taken on the characteristics of a political slogan over the course of the school reform movement of the late 20th century. Used by the proponents of high stakes testing in general and by the advocates of the OPT in particular, the term is used to freeze the arguments of those opposed to such testing. To argue against accountability is seemingly to argue against being a responsible professional practitioner.
However, if the term is understood in the context of its actual definition, we can quickly understand the fallacy of its use by the politicians and others who have adopted it as a slogan to beat children and educators into submitting to the blind acceptance of proficiency testing and school report cards. Understanding the concept of accountability requires understanding also the nature of decision latitude.
Simply put, accountability is and must be a function of decision latitude. It is unrealistic and certainly unjust to hold anyone accountable for something over which they have no control... no decision latitude. If the State of Ohio were to hold local news weather reporters accountable for each day's weather, the public would think that to be silly and uninformed. In the case of OPT (and high stakes testing in general), there is an implicit assumption that test results are entirely a function of curriculum and instruction as carried out by teachers and of what students have had the opportunity to learn in school. However, when we find that OPT district performance is determined primarily by non-school forces and factors that reflect the lived experiences of Ohio's children, the idea of holding either district educators or school children accountable for OPT performance is absurd and logically wrong.
Under the procedures of traditional teaching practices and curriculum development, changing OPT performance significantly is not within the control of district educators. Therefore since educators do not have the power or decision latitude to affect significantly OPT performance, holding them accountable is realistically quite impossible without first instituting systemic change that will incorporate a more empowering paradigm of teaching and learning.
No dedicated education professional rejects accountability; indeed, educators welcome accountability initiatives that will validly demonstrate to all stakeholders the dedication, success, and effectiveness of their professional practice. The Hoover Study of OPT performance speaks only to addressing the injustice of using the OPT for educator, school district, and student accountability. The study's findings and discussions should be read as supporting education accountability within the context of understanding both the nature of the concept of accountability and the nature of the concept of test validity.
It is critical to know that neither the findings of this study nor the explanation about the reality of accountability are intended to beg the question of Ohio's school pupils academic achievement. The question as to whether OPT scores can be raised can certainly be answered in the affirmative. However, the educational imperative must not be based on an invalid test nor must it be directed toward any form of high stakes testing. Instead, it must be driven by the vision of empowerment, the idea that what students are taught in schools must be personally experienced by the students. Knowledge must be taught in such a manner that it is felt as relevant and usable in the mind of the learner. To empower learners requires constructing learning activities that become personally felt lived experiences for the students in the classrooms, not abstract rote exercises over facts and ideas that the students perceive as meaningless and irrelevant.
In this sense, learning activities become true life experiences that will empower them to academic success in the same manner that their out-of-school experiences shape what they know or do not know as measured by the OPT. We know the power of lived experience as it is shown within this study; therefore, we need to consider how learning activities created by teachers must be felt as life experiences by their students. In terms of accountability, it is only when we fulfill our obligation to teach academic knowledge for its usability and relevance via an authentic lived experience for the learner that we can then validly assess that learning. . . thus holding educators and students accountable for that over which they have legitimate control.