The Evolving Accountability Policy Paradigm: Understanding the Moral Assumptions and Policy Preferences of Policy Actors

• In Event: Hilton Roundtable Session 21
  In Roundtable Session: Critical Perspectives on Accountability and Data-Driven Education

Abstract

With the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act, states have flexibility to design unique state-level accountability policies. To understand why states are taking different approaches to policy design, this paper leverages in-depth interviews, document analysis, and surveys with 65 highly influential policy actors in two states, California and Tennessee. California is taking a decentralized, capacity building approach to policy design, whereas Tennessee is engaging with a centralized, high-stakes approach. Using a conceptual framework of 'policy paradigms', the paper explores the worldviews and taken-for-granted moral assumptions of influential policy actors that influence new ideas for the design of education accountability policy. Results show that actors tend to coalesce into six different groups with unique moral and policy perspectives.

Author

• Erin Coghlan, University of California - Berkeley