Redesigning Accountability for Equity: Policy Making as Organizational Learning

• In Event: Performance Funding and Organizational Learning in Higher Education

Abstract

Objectives
For accountability policy to have greater impact on postsecondary institutional outcomes it must facilitate a process of meaningful organizational learning (Colyvas, 2012; Dougherty & Reddy, 2013; Ewell, 2012)—particularly with respect to equity among racial/ethnic groups (Bensimon, 2005; Dowd & Tong, 2007). Adjusting the design of accountability policy has been critical for the states/systems that have maintained performance-based funding (Dougherty, Natow, Bork, Jones, & Vega, 2011). To the extent that policy design is implicated in supporting institution-level learning, we must understand how policymakers engage in learning about the effectiveness of accountability systems.
This paper analyzes the redevelopment of performance-based accountability policies in two states—particularly with respect to equity as a policy goal—and addresses the following research questions:
1. What processes, actions, and external factors contribute to the redesign and ongoing adjustment by policymakers in Pennsylvania and Colorado of the performance accountability systems in these states?
2. In what ways have policy designers understood equity as a policy goal, what other political factors have contributed to equity as a goal, and how is learning about equity expressed in current policy design?

Theoretical framework
This paper conceptualizes policymakers as a community of practice (Wenger, 1998) engaged in ongoing learning about the design and implementation of accountability policy. The paper draws on organizational learning theories that view organizations as “interpretive systems” (Daft & Weick, 1984) where learning occurs in communities nested within organizations (Brown & Duguid, 1991; Wenger, 1998). Within these frameworks learning includes the pursuit of new information to promote organizational effectiveness (Argyris & Schön, 1974; Huber, 1991; Popper & Lipshitz, 1998) and the negotiation of meaning and interpretation of that information by organizational members (Lave & Wenger, 1991) and the reification of those interpretations within policy design. The study also uses policy implementation and political science literatures with respect to behavioral assumptions underlying incentives as policy tools (e.g., Scheider & Ingram, 1990) and the emergence of equity as a political goal within dominant policy discourses around completion, productivity, and efficiency (Dar, in press; Dowd & Shieh, 2013; Stone, 2002).

Methods
This study looks at processes of policymaker learning and policy design in two states, Pennsylvania (PASSHE) and Colorado, which have recently implemented or are implementing revised performance accountability systems that emphasize both equity and completion as primary performance objectives. We analyze state/system-generated documents related to performance accountability policies and interview officials in both states who were/are involved in policy design.

Preliminary Results
Policymakers in both states engage in processes and practices that reflect principles of organizational learning, including defining problems, acquiring new models from the external environment, negotiating policy values and meanings with institutional leaders, and adjusting existing models to fit local legal and political constraints. These processes occur within political contexts and reflect embedded assumptions about institutional values and capacities. We find examples of conditions in which policymakers struggle to connect policy goals with institutional practices and examples of conditions that appear to generate shared learning among practitioners and policymakers around equity and completion as complementary outcomes.

Authors

• Keith Witham, Temple University

• Estela M. Bensimon, University of Southern California