Educational Accountability Research Articles

Exploring the relationship between external and internal accountability in education: A cross-country analysis with multi-level structural equation modeling

In recent decades, education systems worldwide have increasingly adopted external accountability policies as the centerpiece of a school reform movement. This study explored how much performance-based external accountability pressures affect the internal accountability measures of schools. Using 46 educational systems’ Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 data, we employed multi-level structural equation modeling to examine whether and how external accountability impacts internal accountability factors such as school principal leadership, teacher morale, teacher monitoring, and the consequences of teacher appraisal measured by the responses of school principals. The findings indicate that external accountability has a consistently positive impact on a principal’s performance goal oriented instructional leadership, which mediates the relationship of external accountability with other internal accountability factors. The impact of external accountability in low-performing schools was observed in strong principal leadership and was executed with severe consequences for teacher appraisal. We suggest a customized application of external accountability policies to schools in different contexts and for principals to focus on teacher morale and teacher monitoring more.

Higher Education Accreditation and University Autonomy

University autonomy is regarded as the necessary condition to implement advanced university governance practices to improve and enhance the quality of higher education. It should be paid attention to how to grant autonomy to higher education institutions and how these institutions exercise autonomy to ensure the purpose of improving the efficiency and quality of higher education; at the same time, to ensure the fairness and accountability for society. Accreditation is one of the approaches in education management for higher education institutions to ensure their quality, while ensuring accountability for their quality to society. This paper focuses on the relationship between university autonomy and accreditation. First, the study presents practical issues regarding university autonomy, including the literature review of university autonomy across the world and in Vietnam. Second, the paper analyses the relationship of university autonomy with the affirmation of higher education institutions’ academic prestige. Third, the study analyses the accountability of higher education institutions, in which accreditation is implemented by institutions as a means for their accountability. Finally, the paper proposes four groups of recommendations for the state management organisation, accreditation agencies and higher education institutions to effectively implement university autonomy with Vietnamese higher education institutions for accreditation.
 Keywords
 Higher education institutions, accreditation, university autonomy, accountabilit
 References
 [1] Đặng Ứng Vận, Nguyễn Thị Huyền Trang (2017) Tự chủ ĐH Việt Nam: nội dung, nguồn lực và trách nhiệm. Tạp chí Khoa học giáo dục số 141 tháng 6/2 017tr 5-8. 
 [2] Thomas Estermann, Terhi Nokkala & Monika Steinel (2011) University Autonomy in Europe II The Scorecard. European University Association. Belgium.[3] Kelchen R. (2018) Higher Education Accountability Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN: 9781421424736. [4] https://www.wisconsin.edu/accountability/ truy cập ngày 10/12/2018.[5] https://ir.uoregon.edu/overview truy cập ngày 10/12/2018.[6] https://www.foriowa.org/accountability/, https://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/2018/, https://uwaterloo.ca/about/accountability, https://www.uvic.ca/home/about/facts-reports/accountability/index.php, http://accountability.tamu.edu/, https://apir.wisc.edu/institution/accountability-reports/.[7] http://cou.on.ca/about/more/university-accountability/, https://www.ucc.ie/en/gdpr/accountability/,

Discourses of teacher quality in the Australian print media 2014–2017: a corpus-assisted analysis

ABSTRACT Discourses of ‘teacher quality’ have been on the rise in Australia since at least the standards-focused policy reforms of the 1990s. This paper uses a corpus-assisted analysis to explore recent deployments of ‘teacher quality’ and ‘teaching quality’ in the Australian print media, drawing on 432 articles collected from the 12 Australian national and capital city daily newspapers over the four-year period from January 2014 to December 2017. The analysis highlights that ‘teacher quality’ and ‘teaching quality’ are deployed differently in respect to school teachers and teachers in higher/vocational education contexts, and examines the nature of these differences. It demonstrates that the print media plays a key role in shaping and/or reflecting the links between discourses of teacher quality and notions of standards and accountability in education; and also in reflecting the highly politicised and political nature of teacher quality discussions and debates in Australia at this time.

Caring to Teach: Exploring the Affective Economies of English Teachers in Singapore

Abstract The ethical project of education hinges on the ideal of caring relations between teachers and students, an ideal that entails deep emotional commitments on the part of teachers. Drawing on interview data from a larger study of teachers’ lived experiences in Singapore’s secondary schools, this paper examines the cultural politics of caring as an emotional practice in teaching. The ethic of care serves to construct normative accounts of good teaching based on “feeling rules,” and becomes a disciplinary technology for evaluating the professional, social and emotional competencies of teachers. I suggest that this project in turn entails an ideological effort to mobilize teachers’ emotional attachment to this ethical ideal. The ethic of care shapes the subjectivities, beliefs, and practices of English teachers, particularly as they circulate through the neoliberal imperatives of educational accountability regimes.

The Leadership Challenge in Wales: Voices From the Front Line

This edited transcript of a seminar held at Llandrindod Wells in November 2017 identifies the views of headteachers in Wales on a range of major issues including the qualities required for successful leadership, professional development for headship, the use of educational research, leading in different contexts, the importance of collaborative work and the need to change the dominant culture of excessive accountability in Welsh education. Headteachers believe a range of leadership and practical management skills are required for headship and although these are generic to all leadership situations, additional specific skills are required in some contexts. The importance of ongoing support for headteachers commencing when they train for headship, continuing through their induction period in post and then proceeding throughout their careers is emphasised. The importance of leading collaborative models of professional learning based on school-to-school working and drawing upon educational research is highlighted. Whilst there is recognition that schools need to be held accountable, the excessive and often punitive nature of accountability within the current education system in Wales is viewed as being detrimental to innovation and as having harmful effects on recruitment to and retention in headship. These are all seen as being important issues for the new National Academy for Education Leadership to consider.

Marketing accountability e excelência na escola pública portuguesa: A construção da imagem social da escola através da performatividade académica

Os autores procuram refletir sobre a relação entre os resultados obtidos pelos alunos nos exames estandardizados, a excelência académica e a forma correspondente de accountability. Partimos do pressuposto de que os testes estandardizados e a excelência académica sustentam não só um managerial model of accountability mas igualmente um modelo de (quasi) market accountability em educação, que providencia estratégias de marketing escolar. Do ponto de vista metodológico, este estudo é apoiado por um trabalho de campo de longa duração desenvolvido em várias escolas públicas portuguesas, onde se analisaram documentos, observaram os rituais públicos de distinção académica e se entrevistaram diretores escolares, professores e estudantes. Os resultados mostram que os rituais públicos de distinção académica dos melhores alunos constituem uma estratégia de marketingusada para promover a imagem social da escola, essencial para induzir a escolha da escola pelas famílias e para reforçar as decisões da liderança do diretor.

Does selection pay off? A cost-benefit comparison of medical school selection and lottery systems.

ContextResources for medical education are becoming more constrained, whereas accountability in medical education is increasing. In this constrictive environment, medical schools need to consider and justify their selection procedures in terms of costs and benefits. To date, there have been no studies focusing on this aspect of selection.ObjectivesWe aimed to examine and compare the costs and benefits of two different approaches to admission into medical school: a tailored, multimethod selection process versus a lottery procedure. Our goal was to assess the relative effectiveness of each approach and to compare these in terms of benefits and costs from the perspective of the medical school.MethodsThe study was conducted at Maastricht University Medical School, at which the selection process and a weighted lottery procedure ran in parallel for 3 years (2011–2013). The costs and benefits of the selection process were compared with those of the lottery procedure over three student cohorts throughout the Bachelor's programme. The extra costs of selection represented the monetary investment of the medical school in conducting the selection procedure; the benefits were derived from the increase in income generated by the prevention of dropout and the reductions in extra costs facilitated by decreases in the repetition of blocks and objective structured clinical examinations.ResultsThe tailor‐made selection procedure cost about €139 000 when extrapolated to a full cohort of students (n = 286). The lottery procedure came with negligible costs for the medical school. However, the average benefits of selection compared with the lottery system added up to almost €207 000.ConclusionsThis study not only shows that conducting a cost–benefit comparison is feasible in the context of selection for medical school, but also that an ‘expensive’ selection process can be cost‐beneficial in comparison with an ‘inexpensive’ lottery system. We encourage other medical schools to examine the cost‐effectiveness of their own selection processes in relation to student outcomes in order to extend knowledge on this important topic.

Bobbing for Bad Apples: Accreditation, Quantitative Performance Measures, and the Identification of Low-Performing Colleges

ABSTRACTRecent trends in higher education (rising debt, school closures, increasing tuition) have increased interest in improving accountability and oversight in U.S. higher education beyond current accreditation practices. Common solutions include using quantitative measures like graduation and default rates to benchmark performance. Using historical data on accreditation actions, we compare the performance of a hypothetical quantitative evaluation system to contemporary accreditation standards in identifying low-performing schools. We find first that schools facing accreditation sanctions are, on average, also low performing on the quantitative outcomes we consider. However, if we use this average performance as a benchmark to identify other low-performing schools, then a substantial portion of the higher education sector would be implicated. These results raise questions about the capacity of a purely quantitative evaluation system to narrowly identify low-performing schools. We conclude with a discussion of the issues concerning data, equity, and other considerations for higher education accountability moving forward.

Medir o que valorizamos ou valorizar o que medimos? Globalização, responsabilidade e a noção de propósito da educação

Uma das mais importantes dimensões do impacto da globalização nas políticas e práticas educacionais foi o aumento das medições comparativas em grande escala do desempenho dos sistemas educativos nacionais. Neste artigo, meu argumento é que em vez de esse desenvolvimento ter respaldado e promovido um debate acerca do bom ensino, essas medições substituíram as perguntas normativas sobre as orientações e os ganhos educacionais desejáveis por perguntas técnicas sobre a produção eficaz de um conjunto particular (e com frequência delimitado) de resultados educacionais. Por um lado, tenciono contribuir para a compreensão da razão pela qual se criou essa situação, e aqui destaco em particular uma mudança de um enfoque substancial e democrático para um enforque técnico e administrativo ,acerca de como se considera a prestação de contas em educação. Por outro lado, ofereço parâmetros para uma discussão mais explícita que se concentre nas perguntas acerca do que se busca obter na educação, não com o fim de especificar de uma vez por todas o que é ou deveria ser o bom ensino, mas para facilitar um debate mais sofisticado, variado e reflexivo acerca de quais poderiam ser os parâmetros de uma boa educação nas escolas, colégios e universidades e em outros ambientes e instituições educativas.

Accountable to Whom?: The Use of Media to Communicate Educational Accountability to Latino Families in a California Middle School

This paper explores how one Title I middle school in California responds to high-stakes accountability during an era of educational reform, and how one first-generation Latino immigrant family comes to understand the school’s focus on test scores, high expectations, and academic achievement. Drawing from a larger Language Socialization study that utilizes participation observation and interview data, the paper provides ethnographic snapshots to demonstrate the ways in which one school communicated under, with, and through high stakes educational reform policies via a variety of media while functioning under Program Improvement status, and how the focal family participated in and negotiated these draconian educational policies that became part of their everyday experience with schooling in the U.S.

School leadership and school improvement: an examination of school readiness factors

ABSTRACTThis article reports on an investigation into the influence stemming from school leadership as an important consideration in relation to school improvement. School readiness, based on [Schiemann, W. A. 2014. “From Talent Management to Talent Optimization.” Journal of World Business 49 (2): 281–288. doi:10.1016/j.jwb.2013.11.012]. Accountability, Capability and Engagement (ACE) leadership model, was assessed through self-reported school leader behaviours, attitudes, perceptions, and school improvement attributes. To clarify, school readiness refers to how a school principal optimises staff and other school resources to best achieve school improvement agendas. School readiness survey results and student achievement outcomes for one entire school district were analysed, indicating that school readiness did indeed impact student achievement. Findings reveal a need for school leaders to focus more clearly on overall school alignment and optimisation behaviours, and these are discussed in relation to specific leadership recommendations and how leadership can better support and encourage school improvement in terms of educational accountability.

“They don’t have the history and the stature:” examining perceptions of Caribbean offshore medical schools held by Canadian medical education stakeholders

Caribbean offshore medical schools are for-profit, private institutions that provide undergraduate medical education to primarily international students, including from the United States or Canada. Despite the growing role that offshore medical schools play in training Canadian physicians, little is known about how these institutions are perceived by those in professional and decision-making positions where graduates intend to practice. The authors interviewed 13 Canadian medical education stakeholders whose professional positions entail addressing the medical education system or physician workforce. Participants were employed in academic, governmental, and non-governmental organizations in leadership roles. Thematic analysis revealed three cross-cutting perceptions of offshore medical schools: (a) they are at the bottom of an international hierarchy of medical schools; (b) they are heterogeneous in quality of education and student body; and (c) they have a unique business model, characterized by profit-generating and serving international students. Consistent growth of the offshore medical school industry in the Caribbean may result in adverse reputational harms for well-established offshore or regional medical schools. Both comparative (e.g., USMLE pass rate) and intuitive factors (e.g., professional familiarity) informed participants' perceptions. Participants believed that core principles of social accountability in medical education are incompatible with the offshore medical school model.

Student feedback apparatuses in higher education: an agential realist analysis

ABSTRACT This paper shows how Karen Barad’s agential realism provides a powerful analytical framework for assessing higher education accountability. It takes the example of the UK ‘National Student Survey’ (NSS), a questionnaire, which purports to ascertain student course satisfaction in universities. The paper demonstrates how agential realism offers the opportunity to make visible (and theorise) three suggested effects of the NSS: (i) affective dimensions of lecturer experience; (ii) boundary creations between lecturers and students; and (iii) the marginalisation of experimental conceptualisations of practice. Analysing narrative data from six university lecturers, it will be shown how agential realism has a capacity to theorise the sociological realms of classroom encounters, institutional practices and national policy in their very entanglement. That is, university lecturers’ practice is analysed as ‘apparatuses of bodily production’ that are enfolded into larger institutional and national apparatuses.

Tests, Test Scores, and Constructs

In the service of educational accountability, student achievement tests are being used to measure constructs quite unlike those envisioned by test developers. Scores are compared to cut points to create classifications like “proficient”; scores are combined over time to measure growth; student scores are aggregated to measure the effectiveness of teachers, schools, and school districts; indices are created to measure college and career readiness. These and other new uses rely on derived scores created to measure new constructs. The field of educational and psychological measurement has largely ignored these significant, consequential measurement applications. The conceptual frameworks and analytical tools of educational and psychological measurement should be used to study such derived scores and the validity of their uses and interpretations.

Who expects to become a teacher? The role of educational accountability policies in international perspective

In this study, I examine between-country differences in students' expectations of becoming teachers. I use data from 365,298 students from 50 countries participating in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015. The results reveal that high-achieving students in countries that implement test-based educational accountability policies are less likely to expect to work as teachers than students in systems that do not use such policies. This suggests that test-based accountability policies may discourage highly skilled candidates from entering the teaching profession and these policies may act as barriers to attracting high-quality teacher candidates.

AKUNTABILITAS SEKOLAH; SUATU UPAYA MENINGKATKAN MUTU PENDIDIKAN MADRASAH

Tidak salah jika banyak orang memiliki citra buruk pendidikan Islam saat ini. Karena pendidikan islami memiliki kualitas yang kurang baik, rendahnya partisipasi masyarakat dalam mengembangkan sekolah, dan kurangnya jaringan di dunia. Karena itu, perlu langkah baru dalam mengelola sekolah yang merupakan akuntabilitas. Akuntabilitas diasumsikan meningkatkan kualitas pendidikan madrasah. Artikel ini ditujukan; a) untuk memahami konsep akuntabilitas pendidikan, b) untuk memahami implikasi penerapan akuntabilitas pendidikan untuk pendidikan islam.

University Autonomy and Accountability in Russian Higher Education

Historically, the Russian State has had a tumultuous relationship with institutional independence. For the country to become again an academic superpower, it is necessary to expand university autonomy to enable independent strategic thinking on the leadership’s part and ensure that universities are accountable to their stakeholders. This article considers the broad issues of university autonomy and accountability in Russia from historical and contemporary perspectives.

University Autonomy and Accountability in Russian Higher Education

Historically, the Russian State has had a tumultuous relationship with institutional independence. For the country to become again an academic superpower, it is necessary to expand university autonomy to enable independent strategic thinking on the leadership’s part and ensure that universities are accountable to their stakeholders. This article considers the broad issues of university autonomy and accountability in Russia from historical and contemporary perspectives.

Peranan Perilaku Organisasi dan Manajemen Strategi dalam Meningkatkan Produktivitas Output Pendidikan

The Strategic issues that are currently the problem of education this time include the achievement of low quality seeing graduate productivity, factors related to issue value for money, and factors of educational accountability. Organizational behavior includes a complex collection of ideologies, symbols, and core values that apply in the company and influence the way to run the business. Establishing an organizational culture is the main task of effective strategic leadership. This study aims to reveal how organizational behavior influences the process of organizational change. Implementation of Change is a process that stems from differences in mindset. This research is library research. The primary data source is the theory of organizational behavior. Secondary data sources are change theory, strategic management, and productivity. Research result shows that thoughts of people who are in the organization build the mind of the organization to build a good condition that will produce a good performance. Component of increasing productivity in the context of educational output is (1) work attitude; (2) skill competence; (3) environment relationship; (4) productivity management; (5) labor efficiency and (6) entrepreneurship.

The degree of practicing educational accountability among school principals in Al-'Aqeeq Governorate, Saudi Arabia; from the point of view of teachers and teachers: درجة ممارسة المساءلة التربوية لدى مديري المدارس في محافظة العقيق بالمملكة العربية السعودية؛ من وجهة نظر المعلمين والمعلمات

The study aimed at revealing the degree of application of principals and principals of public education schools in Al-Aqiq Governorate in Al-Baha region in Saudi Arabia to educational accountability from the point of view of teachers working with them. The questionnaire was used as a tool for study. It was distributed to a random sample of 277 individuals, of whom 155 were males and 122 were females. Statistical data processing using the SPSS system: The results of the study showed that the degree of application of school principals to the educational accountability of the tool as a whole came at an average of (4,26), with a very high estimate. In the field of functional discipline, the average was (4,31). In the field of work and achievement it was average (4.2) The field of professional ethics among school principals was average (4,26), all of them were very large. The results showed no statistically significant differences between the average responses of the study sample in the fields of the study instrument according to gender variables and years of experience. There were statistically significant differences according to the variable of the educational stage in the fields of professional ethics, work and achievement, as well as in the tool as a whole for the benefit of the workers in the primary stage.