Accountability

Jane Clark Lindle & James G. Cibulka

Accountability refers to official efforts to ensure that public schools are answerable to a variety of stakeholders. Unlike the principle of responsibility , which can be exercised and validated through informal norms and voluntary behavior by public officials, the principle of accountability requires external validation through formal policies, structures, processes, and outcomes. Accountability extends beyond the norms of professional self-regulation purportedly to ensure that schooling systems remain answerable to the public. Given a breadth of approaches directed toward legitimating schools' public responsiveness, accountability can be manifested through a variety of mechanisms, including any of the following: electoral processes; laws and regulations; bureaucratic or judicial oversight; standards for students or programs; assessments of student learning; disclosure and reporting to the public of school district, school, teacher, or student performance; rewards and sanctions designed to improve performance of any of these entities; accreditation of programs; and licensure standards. Accountability processes may be ...

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