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Accountability For School Improvement

The most promising approach to promote organizational learning and improvement in schools is to combine administrative and professional accountability.

Some school districts are experimenting with combinations of (1) outcomes-based administrative accountability, to identify areas of low performance; and (2) professionally based interventions and accountability, to foster school adaptation to address these problems.

What is important is the interplay of professional and bureaucratic accountability.

In research at WCER for the Consortium for Policy Research in Education, Jennifer O'Day found that this combination allows for a more thorough and balanced incorporation of all aspects of accountability. It draws attention to information relevant to teaching and learning; it motivates individuals and units through intrinsic as well as extrinsic incentives to attend and to use that information; it builds the knowledge base for valid interpretation of information; and it allocates resources where they are most needed.