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 School Accountability
Edited by Williamson M. Evers and Herbert J. Walberg
Hoover Institution, June 2002
This book is an assessment by the Koret Task Force on K-12 Education.
From their website:
The Koret Task Force on K–12 Education is a top-rate team of education experts
brought together by the Hoover Institution, with the support of the Koret Foundation,
to work on education reform. The primary objectives of the task force are to gather,
evaluate, and disseminate existing evidence in an analytical context, and analyze
reform measures that will enhance the quality and productivity of K–12 education.
Click here to visit the Koret Task Force website.
Book Description:
Accountability--our best hope for improving American public schools
Although educators and school boards sometimes resist the idea, accountability
is sorely needed in America's schools. Our students are falling behind those in
other countries, yet compared to their foreign counterparts, our schools remain
subject to little accountability. The U.S. school system lacks the marketplace
accountability of schools competing with one another and the further accountability
of large-scale examination systems, both of which are associated with high achievement.
It is clear that after a quarter century of poor progress in educational productivity,
the time has come for high academic standards and accountability.
This book brings together a group of expert authors from a wide range of perspectives--history,
economics, political science, and psychology--to reveal what is known about accountability,
what still needs to be learned, what should be done right now, and what should
be avoided in devising accountability systems. The authors dispel common myths
about accountability and show that it indeed offers the best hope for improving
our public schools. Their contributions include a history behind the ongoing conflict
between educators and policymakers over testing and accountability, a review of
various combinations of accountability schemes that work best together and those
that do not, and an analysis of the costs of accountability, which shows that
it is one of the most cost-effective of all school reforms. They offer a comparison
of accountability in three states with relatively strong systems--California,
Texas, and Florida--revealing how it works in practice. And they examine the specific
features needed in effective accountability systems, providing examples of consumer-friendly
reporting of results from actual accountability systems.
When you buy School Accountability using the Amazon.com link above, a portion of the profits will go to support
Common Good. | |
