Educational Leadership in the Context of Low-Stakes Accountability and School Autonomy: The Canadian Perspective

• In Event: School Leadership in the Context of Standards-Based Reform: International Perspectives

Abstract

Objectives
This presentation examines large-scale assessment programs across Canada, focusing on school leadership models that use these assessments to inform and direct school improvement efforts. Throughout Canada, there remains a high level of school autonomy with respect to school improvement, which operate within a relatively low level of individual and school accountability. Provincial Ministries of Education do not impose sanctions on poor performing schools or school boards. Rather, educational accountability in Canada appears to embrace a more supportive model of school improvement, in which resources are provided to help guide efforts to improve student achievement.

Perspectives
The Canadian experience with large-scale testing and school accountability continues to expand (Klinger, et al., 2008; Volante & Ben Jaafar, 2008). Each province in Canada is responsible for its own public education system. Hence differences exist across the country, as each province attempts to address the growing accountability expectations imposed on public education. Nonetheless, the education and accountability systems are surprisingly similar (e.g., Klinger, DeLuca, & Miller; McEwen, 1995). Currently, educational accountability models throughout Canada commonly use low-stakes, large-scale assessment programs to support and inform school improvement efforts. These models provide school board and school administrators the autonomy to direct their improvement efforts to meet their students’ educational needs, with no direct threat negative consequences towards individual administrators, teachers, schools, or school boards.

Mode of Inquiry/Methodology
Each Canadian province provides insight into the accountability models that exist, and the role of school administrators to address accountability expectations. The Ontario perspective provides a valuable summary of the commonalities and variations that exist across the country. Starting with a broad review of each province, the paper will focus on the current accountability and school improvement expectations and practices occurring in Ontario’s schools.

Results
The paper highlights the model of distributed leadership commonly found in Ontario, and the rest of Canada, in which school leadership has evolved from a managerial role to one of creating shared leadership and professional learning communities to improve students’ educational outcomes. A key feature of school improvement and educational accountability in Canada is the expectation for teachers to have a central role in defining and directing improvement efforts. This paper identifies the important role of school administrators and the potential for school leadership teams to enable teachers to direct and implement these improvement efforts. It also highlights the challenges associated with accountability models when large-scale assessment programs are the primary measure to gauge the impact of improvement efforts. Through this examination, the existing challenges, results, and ongoing research needs of such accountability models will be shared.

Scholarly Significance
This paper, along with the other papers in this symposium, highlights the varied approaches educational jurisdictions use to implement school improvement initiatives, and the roles of educational leaders to support these initiatives. They highlight how such initiatives are shaped by political structures and cultural beliefs and expectations and the context in which they work, providing important insights into the ways in which leaders attempt to balance autonomy and accountability.

Author

• Don A. Klinger, Queen's University - Kingston