A Balanced School Accountability Model: An Alternative to High-Stakes Testing
by Ken Jones
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Overview
Ken Jones argues that schools need to focus more on meeting the learning needs of students, and having high expectations for them, than on the results of public examinations. He suggests that principals and other members of the school leadership team need to prioritise these questions:
- What do we want students to know and be able to do as a result of schooling?
- What are we doing about the physical and emotional well-being of students?
- What are we doing to support student learning, and the thinking skills and dispositions needed in a modern democratic society?
- How are we supporting teachers’ professional learning?
He adapts an accountability framework from business and says we could employ it in schools to assess our success by:
- focusing on student learning
- providing opportunities for successful learning
- school responding to the needs of students, their families and community
- achieving organisational capacity of schools to continually improve what they do.
Jones’s material is based on the American educational system, but he makes it relevant to New Zealand. He commends the New Zealand National Education Monitoring Project (NEMP) as an excellent form of evaluation focusing on student learning. His argument supports the work of Viviane Robinson that effective school leadership needs to focus on pedagogical (or instructional) leadership.
The article can be used with other school leaders to discuss issues of school focus on learning, to consider school capability for improving learning outcomes, and how best to measure a school’s accountability. It also makes a strong case against high-stakes public testing.
Reflective questions
These reflective questions might guide you in your reading of this article:
- The issue of holding schools accountable is a very public and complex matter. What accountability measures would provide the best information about your school’s successes and areas for improvement? How could you use your partnership with your community to contribute to the accountability process?
- How could Jones’s suggestion of the balanced scorecard be used in the New Zealand context? Under each of the four areas listed in the balanced scorecard model, give two or three points that would be helpful.
Further reading
The article has an extensive and useful reference list.
Reference
Jones, K. (2004). A balanced school accountability model: An alternative to high-stakes testing [Electronic version]. Phi Delta Kappan, 85(8), 584–590.
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