Enacting Accountabilities in Education (Part 1): Its Effects on School Practices and Outcomes

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

In recent decades, education governance increasingly relies on performance-based accountability (PBA) instruments. A key assumption underlying PBA is that holding schools accountable for achievement of learning standards will encourage school actors to adopt more effective educational strategies. PBA is also expected to generate new sources of data that school actors should use to promote instructional improvement. Nonetheless, evidence on the circumstances and mechanisms under which these policy initiatives generate their intended effects or, otherwise, side- or unintended-effects remains inconclusive. The papers in this double-symposium represent diverse educational settings and accountability regimes, and address the ways in which different accountability designs are enacted at district and school levels and their potential of generating particular policy outcomes and effects.

Sub Unit

• International Relations Committee

Chair

• Marjolein Camphuijsen, Autonomous University of Barcelona

Papers

• Dealing With Performance-Based Accountability: A Conjoint Analysis of School Leaders' Strategies to Improve Test Results - Antonina Levatino, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; Gerard Ferrer-Esteban, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya; Antoni Verger, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

• In and Out of the "Pressure Cooker": Schools' Varying Responses to Accountability and Datafication - Gerard Ferrer-Esteban, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya; Antoni Verger, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; Lluís Parcerisa, Autonomous University of Barcelona

• The Enactment of Performance-Based Accountability in Madrid: Unpacking Rationalities and School Responses - Marcel Pagès, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

• A Sociological Analysis of the Effects of Accountability Policies on the Distribution of Educational Outcomes - Aaron Pallas, Teachers College, Columbia University

Discussant

• Audrey Amrein-Beardsley, Arizona State University