A Message from the President:
The End of Accountability
Accountability has become a cornerstone of the U.S. Department of Education both in K-12 and, increasingly, in higher education. Under No Child Left Behind the U.S.—and the states—are geared toward “adequate yearly progress” and increased performance, with targets set for the year 2014. Indeed, the broad and specific requirements of NCLB cover numerous performance outcomes and the way in which they are to be assessed.
Now, some higher education leaders have been chafing, though often politely, under the Spellings Commission Report on the Future of Higher Education. That report outlines the interest of the commissioners and the Department of Education in guiding colleges and universities toward greater “accountability” on the quality of college education. The Department leaders have been attempting to arrive at common methods of reporting quality: student learning, skill acquisition, retention in school, time to degree completion, job performance, or other measures.
The logical argument for public accountability is sound. The reasoning goes something like this: The taxpayer has a right to information about how tax moneys are spent and to what effect. It is the administration’s responsibility to protect taxpayer interests in the expenditure of federal (taxpayer) dollars. Recipients of federal moneys need to report in some consistent way to the government and to the public the impact of those dollars.
Another argument for accountability is transnational in nature and Thomas Friedman would support it. If the U.S. hopes to continue to lead or even continue to compete in the world marketplace, it must ensure that its next generations of citizens will become smart, creative, entrepreneurial, and world-savvy people. The U.S. education system will stand as the corner piece of that proposition, but the situation looks worse, not better. According to OECD data held up by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, our kids are doing worse in critical school subjects by comparison with their peers in other developed nations. Further, our higher education system, once and maybe still touted as the best in the world, now runs up against competition from other nations.
The two arguments are related. It is the government’s job to keep us focused on increased productivity in tax-based spending, and to maintain a covenant with the citizens to promote truthfully the interests of Americans. We have an interest in maintaining and improving our quality of life, which derives in large part from our strong education systems.
Is increased accountability the answer? Well, yes, of sorts. No decent business or organization can survive without measurement, analysis, and accountability. There is only one road to improve our institutions, and that is by knowing where they stand—relative to one another and relative to the year previous. We’ve watched schools improve after reviewing performance data and applying sound strategy. (See our school improvement projects and data driven decision research.) We’re helping colleges build more responsive distance learning management systems through our Interactive Quality Assessment Tool (IQAT).
As a company, we have invested in building accountability systems that help our clients improve their work and performance. We hope you will join in the search for continually better methods to account for performance and to improve services. Let me know how we can help your organization on the road to its mission.
Richard T. Hezel, Ph.D.
President