Does school accountability change educators’ behaviors and improve learning outcomes? From the Lebanese case.

• In Event: Power and culture: studying the frontiers of educational change and cultural reproduction

Proposal

This study aims for decomposing a pathway of school accountability to influence learning outcomes by examining the association between the information disclosure of students’ achievement data and learning outcomes or educators’ behaviors in Lebanon, using PISA 2018.

The assumption behind the school accountability mechanism is the principal-agent framework. In other words, the principals (policy-makers, administrative authorities, and citizens especially parents and students) delegate school provisions to agents (educators), the agents provide the school, and the principals monitor and assess the agents’ performance and reinforce their good or discourage bad performance (World Bank, 2003). The expectation is that the agents behave align with the interests of the principals through monitoring and information disclosure about their performance (e.g., students’ learning outcomes), and/or explicit rewards for good performance and sanctions for performance that does not meet expectations (Figlio & Loeb, 2011). This relationship, through which the principals express their demands toward the agents, is called “client power” (World Bank, 2003). The notion of school accountability has become prevalent across the globe, supported by influential international organizations such as OECD (Jerrim & Sims, 2022).

However, despite such an assumption about how school accountability can improve learning outcomes, its effect is weak or inconclusive (Gershberg et al., 2011). Moreover, school accountability may even produce negative impacts on school management such as increasing teachers’ stress (Jerrim & Sims, 2022), hindering their professionalism (Donnelly & Sadler, 2009), narrowing education into “test preparation” (Karp, 2021), and discouraging highly skilled candidates from teaching careers (Han, 2018).

Scholars have suggested preconditions for school accountability to improve learning outcomes, such as 1) enabling environments for collective action of principals (Fox, 2015), 2) the agents’ responsiveness (Fox, 2015), and autonomy (Figlio & Loeb, 2011), and 3) coherence over the education system (Pritchett, 2015).
Fox (2015) focused on the fact that information disclosure is not enough to produce a positive impact on school performance. He argued enabling environments for collective action and bolstering public sector responsiveness through governmental reforms are necessary to make an accountability mechanism effective. Figlio & Loeb (2011) pointed out that schools with greater autonomy such as over budget allocation or curriculum choice are influenced more positively by school accountability mechanisms since they can adjust their behaviors to improve learning outcomes. Furthermore, Pritchett (2015) argued incoherent school accountability system decreases the effectiveness of education systems. For example, incoherent school accountability includes an overambitious vision relative to the amount or structure of finance, or inconsistent expectations toward teachers from administrative authorities and parents.

To understand this growing globally but inconclusive practice, it is necessary to decompose a pathway of accountability to influence the learning outcomes (Fox, 2015; Kim, 2012). While the supporter of school accountability mechanisms assumes that school accountability influences students’ learning outcomes via changing educators’ behaviors through “client power”, there are limited numbers of studies that examined a relationship between school accountability and educators’ behaviors, especially outside of the United States (Jerrim & Sims, 2022).
Therefore, this study will contribute to addressing this gap by focusing on Lebanese schools. Lebanese schools will be an interesting case to explore because their disclosure of achievement data for the wide public is associated negatively with the reading performance of 15-year-old students even after controlling students’ and schools’ socioeconomic profiles according to PISA 2018 analysis (OECD, 2020).

In Lebanon, students show significantly lower achievement than in countries at a similar level of economic development. The gap between top and bottom economic, social, and cultural status and between public and private schools is also large (Abdul-Hamid & Yassine, 2020). To address these low quality and inequality of education, there is a call to strengthen the accountability mechanism. The current mechanism is criticized because of the lack of external oversight and systematic and sustainable stakeholder engagement to support education (Abdul-Hamid & Yassine, 2020). However, PISA 2018 results show that we need to be careful about promoting information disclosure in Lebanon.

While more private schools publish their achievement data than public schools, PISA 2018 analysis did not account for schools’ governance and funding types. Furthermore, they did not show if other information disclosure activities (i.e., sharing students’ achievement data with the administrative authorities and parents) influence students’ learning outcomes. Therefore, this study first examines:
1. Are information disclosure of students’ achievements to the public, administrative authorities, and parents associated with students’ learning outcomes, accounting for students’ and schools’ socioeconomic profiles, and schools’ governance and funding type (public/private)?

Then, this study examines if information disclosure of students’ achievements changes educators’ behaviors such as teachers’ efforts to improve learning outcomes.
2. Are information disclosure of students’ achievements to the public, administrative authorities, and parents associated with teachers’ efforts to improve learning outcomes such as absenteeism, willingness to change, and preparation for classes?

This study answers the research questions above through regression analysis of PISA 2018.
In terms of Research question 1, an outcome variable is the student’s reading score. Three predictors about the use of achievement data in school are examined: 1) whether achievement data are posted publicly (e.g., in the media), 2) whether achievement data are tracked over time by an administrative authority, and 3) whether achievement data are provided directly to parents.
In terms of Research question 2, three outcome variables are examined: teachers’ 1) absenteeism, 2) willingness to change, and 3) preparation for classes. Since Lebanese teachers did not participate teacher questionnaire in PISA 2018, a principal questionnaire will be used to get data regarding teachers’ behaviors. Predictors are the same as Research question 1.
In the discussion, this study will apply preconditions for school accountability (Fox, 2015; Figlio & Loeb, 2011; Pritchett, 2015) to interpret the findings.

This study will contribute to addressing a research gap about the relationship between school accountability and educators’ behaviors in low- and middle-income countries. Furthermore, by examining effective education policy in Lebanon where low quality and inequality of education is a huge problem, this study ultimately aims for contributing to expanding our knowledge to realize a more equitable world, which is also a theme of CIES 2023.

Author

• Moe Izawa, University of Pennsylvania