Accountability

Running Head: ACCOUNTABILITY

Accountability

University of Phoenix

Critical Issues in Education EDD/520

Jorge Arias L.

Instructor: Tom Albano

July 23, 2007

Abstract

The purposeof this reflective paper is to show some points in accountability system for district school that are not fair according to the way of think of the author. Judge students and teacher through testingas well as schools is unfair and do not show the real situation of any of these.

Measurement is the first step that leads to control and eventually to improvement. If you can’t measure something,you can’t understand it. If you can’t understand it, you can’t control it. If you can’t control it, you can’t improve it.
H. James Harrington

In the early 1980, president Ronald Reagan, ordereda national commission to study the US education system, and they found that compared with another industrialized countries, the US education system was inadequate in meeting the standards ofeducation that other countries had developed.
During the last years, I had heard and read about accountability so many times. Everyone who write about it has different opinion about different aspects ofit: test results, low-performing schools, what is the best way of teaching important skills and knowledge, not test question, and so on. But what is accountability definition? According to the paper“Urban Schools District Accountability System” written by Education Commission of the States by the Center for Reform of school systems. The authors are Donald R. McAdams, Michelle Wisdom, Sarah Gloverand Anne McClellan. “Accountability is holding people responsible for meeting standards. Accountability is at the core of standards-based school reform. Without accountability, standards are not reallystandards, but rather just goals.” the reality is that there is a lot of confusion in the way to interpret the law or better say both acts 60 and the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB). Both...