Accountability

Development of Accountability Concepts

Accountability is a basic feature of democratic theory and democratic institutions. Accordingly, it has a long, complex history. Aristotle argued for the advantages of democracy over oligarchy and autocracy by recommending that the elected face an accounting at the end of their terms. He further asserted that the governed should retain the right to call republicans to account as insurance for just rule. In England, parliamentary democracy evolved with the concept that the king is answerable for his actions. The subsequent emergence of the idea of popular sovereignty also established the idea that government officials should represent and be held to account for addressing the general will and welfare either through direct democracy or representative institutions.

In the political culture of the United States, public education is one of the political institutions most closely identified with direct democracy through the tradition (and to a degree, the myth) of local control. In most jurisdictions, locally elected school boards govern public schools, and school officials are required or expected to afford opportunities for citizens to participate directly in setting or implementing policies. This ideal of direct democracy holds a near-sacred status in our political culture. The opportunity to elect school board members and to participate in local school affairs is a powerful symbol of U.S. commitment to democratic values.

Many efforts to hold schools accountable can be understood as an enactment of democratic symbolism. Accountability efforts are institutional features intended to legitimate public school systems in the eyes of the public. Local school systems face a legion of ways to account to parents, students, employers, and taxpayers. Across the various U.S. individual states and a number of Westernized countries, accountability policy requirements differ according to local expectations for educational purposes and missions and identify no fewer than six kinds of accountability strategies in education: bureaucratic, legal, professional, political, moral, and market.

Despite its institutionalized character, public demands for accountability tend to ebb and flow. Accountability demands have increased in recent decades. These demands tend to reflect declining public trust in government and, for that matter, diminished public confidence in elites generally. The causes of such populist sentiment are many, stemming from U.S. political events such as the Watergate crisis, social cultural norms questioning forms and exercise of authority, the resurgence of politically conservative critiques of government, and many other factors. As an institution embedded in a political context, the public schooling enterprise mirrors these causal developments and has been an arena where accountability demands have climbed sharply.

...