[NLA] accountability?

[Eileen Eckert]

Who benefits from so-called accountability measures? Can anyone defend them 
as improving services to learners? If so, please give specific examples and 
evidence.

I've noticed a couple of themes in the discussions of standardized tests as 
instruments of accountability: one is that programs that accept the 
standardized test strings attached to federal money seem to be making an 
effort not to let the tests become too big a barrier to learning or too 
detrimental to learners.

Another is that in order to keep standardized tests from interfering too 
much with services to learners, some programs are dispensing with the only 
thing that makes the tests accountability measures--that is, the 
standardization (specifically timing). So how does "accountability" help 
learners?

One outcome of "accountability" is that money that might have gone to serve 
students now goes to buy tests and answer sheets, certify teachers to 
administer the tests, pay trainers to certify the teachers, pay researchers 
to interpret the (invalidated, unreliable, but let's not talk about that) 
data, etc., etc. There's an example of money flowing from the poor to the 
rich!

So how does accountability help learners?





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