Introduction: Reflections on Assessment, Accountability, and School Reform

Abstract

A great irony-some might say frustration-of schooling in America is this: The only stable aspect of school as an American institution is a persistent, constant, repetitive drumbeat for reform. During the early nineteenth century, the goal of reform was to change schools so they could bring sinners to salvation. During the mid-twentieth century, the goal of reform was to use scientific principles in school management to bring enlightenment to society. During our own era, the age of accountability, the goal of reform is to change schools in order to prepare young people for a century of high technology, a superabundance of information, and complex global interconnections (see Popkewitz 1991 for a discussion of the historical constancy of reform). Social justice, economic well-being, technological sophistication, critical literacy, democratic participation, ethical and moral behavior, the promise of a blissful life-you name it and the school has been asked to serve as society's means to achieve it. Although schools by themselves can't possibly accomplish everything that has been asked of them, it seems clear that public schools must be responsive to the citizenry that created and sponsors them by providing resources, land, facilities, transportation, and the like. It seems equally clear that being responsive to societal needs and aims requires that schools change in ways spelled out by our social and political contract. However, the continuous cycle of reform described by our historians has its own set of dangers, not the least of which is that prescriptions for change in school practices are rarely around long enough to have much chance of making a difference. Just about the time one plan for reform becomes fully formed in the public's consciousness, another one appears to take its place, often pushed along by powerful political winds. Far too often, the new prescription looks a lot like an old prescription taken from the shelf and polished a bit. It is hardly any wonder that experienced teachers learn to duck and cover and simply wait for the pendulum to swing. In fact, the continuous emphasis on institutional reform might help explain what scholars have identified as chronic institutional paralysis (Sarason 1990/1993). When schools do change, they don't change much, and they do so very slowly. Although schools today may not differ much from schools thirty or forty years ago, or even those of the more distant past, if we consider change at the deepest levels of the institution, the current season of reform does differ in important ways from past seasons. Of course, the use of tests and measurements to monitor, regulate, and shape mass education has been with us since the early twentieth century; the current reformist use of tests is an excellent example of an old prescription refurbished to look new. But the balance of power between local community and state political leaders has shifted. Funding patterns, for example, have changed since the 1970s from local funds collected through local property taxes to centralized state funding. States have established textbook adoption mechanisms that have led to centralized control over textbook-driven curriculums. States have also developed centralized teacher certification commissions with the