Consulting without Consequences: The Absence of Accountability in Educational Consulting

• In Event: Building Capacity and Coherence for Instructional Improvement and Systemwide Reform

Abstract

Despite a massive field of stakeholders, there is scant research providing empirical insight into educational consultants’ backgrounds, services, and impacts. This dearth is surprising given that consultants are a staple of policy solutions to educational improvement, a phenomenon rife with accountability demands. Qualitatively analyzing extensive interviews with fifty (n=50) self-identified educational consultants, this paper remediates this empirical gap. Grounded in principal-agent theory and institutional theory, findings call into question the massive marketplace for educational consulting given the divergent goals of principals and agents in these consulting relationships and offer insight into the persistence of this marketplace as schools and consultants struggle for legitimacy within the increasingly blurred boundary between public and private interests in public education.

Authors

• Matthew S. McCluskey, University of Vermont

• Elizabeth J. Adams, University of Vermont

• Lindsey A. Cox, University of Vermont