[NLA] accountability?

[Eileen Eckert]

I was looking at a state Dept. of Ed. Adult Ed. website the other day and 
saw a memo about "data quality." In response to new federal regs, the state 
was introducing a rule that said programs needed to analyze, evaluate, and 
provide their accountability data to the state four times a year instead of 
once. I did not see anything about additional money to do this. When 
requirements are added, money to pay for their implementation has to come 
from services.

Accountability measures come from "the leadership" (political, legislative, 
educational) not the service providers. They seem to have a fundamentally 
different perspective and set of assumptions (addressed by Catherine King in 
her last message) than do people who provide literacy, basic skills, ESOL, 
and GED preparation services. It seems to me this schism between "the 
leadership" and the led (the peons?) is a basic problem.

Debbie said, "We have to change their minds." How can we do that?

I would add, we have to do everything we can to put the power and authority 
back at the level of learners, teachers, and programs. That goes beyond 
expertise in teaching subjects and comes back to Linda Hoover's argument for 
structural analysis and Jose Cruz's and others' advocacy for 
coalition-building. Again, though, how?




From: "Debbie Yoho" <dwyoho at earthlink.net>
Reply-To: nla at lists.literacytent.org
To: nla at lists.literacytent.org
Subject: Re: [NLA] accountability?
Date: Fri, 14 Mar 2003 14:21:41 -0500

Eileen Eckert wrote:

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

The people who benefit are those who want to save money, cut programs,
and/or who believe there is a "silver bullet" that will "solve the literacy
problem".  It is also the first argument made by political leadership that
does not want to make the hard decisions when resources are tight:  "Let
the chips fall where they may," they say, "so long as the system is uniform
and therefore fair."  The only defense I've seen is the folk wisdom that
"competition improves services".  I would go so far as to say this is never
true in education, where collegiality and collaboration are the key to
improvement, whether we are talking about research, teaching, learning, or
ny other components of the process.  When educators resist accountability
measures, it is for this valid reason, not because we fear competition,
want to be left alone or prefer to operate without oversight.
Unfortunately, those in control right now don't believe this.

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