National Push for Accountability in Schools

The pace of change dictates that civilizes should provide high quality tutoring standards to students. It requires that the school system should improve their information approaches to enhance academic feats of students. In this connection policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels exhaust worked to increase obligation of the school system on the premise that the same plays a vital grapheme in improving cultivation standards of students and society as puff up. This then pave the way to the recognition of evaluation of school performance to improve standards of learning and achievements of students.The system of office requires schools to define what students should know and be able to do and to measure progress and gaps in students achievement. It facilitates the attainment of the desired education standards anchored on quality nub and high learning standards. Developing appropriate content and student achievement standards are accordingly important part of cov er policymakers and the public a return on their educational investment. However, righteousness of schools for students learning and achievement is impossible without a clear, accented road map on the achievement standards and what and how well students are to learn from kindergarten through graduation.Many states have veritable content and achievement standards without involving stakeholders and teachers. They also have not considered how their standards are to be implemented, measured and tied to answerableness. Developing content and student achievement standards without large contri moreoverion and input from a variety of sources is fatal as in that location is no sense of ownership as well as right from the stakeholders and agencies not represented. The standards set are then viewed as bias and dark-skinned thereby defeating its purpose and rendering weak implementation of the system.Accountability system implements results from interchangeable tests to evaluate perfor mance of students and schools, and provide sanctions, rewards or interventions for schools, educators or students. This system involves reproducible monitoring and evaluation of the students and schools performance that it requires active participation of the educators, parents, stakeholders, and policy makers. The riff effect of the system requires that these concerned people and stakeholders should be consistently committed to the purpose, implementation, and evaluation in order to keep track of students and schools performance and lastly facilitate desired continuous improvement of schools performance standards.According to Kate Nolan (2002), it is not adequacy to believe that all children can learn. All elements of the system must be held accountable for the success of all children. The effect of the accountability system in school is all encompassing that Kate Nolan further noted that, the improvement in school performance requires improvement in all stakeholders performan ce. so change in the system should not be an isolated study for the school heavens but also on the part of the stakeholders as accountability requires their active participation and commitment for the system to work.It is noted that the accountability system is designed to be a tool for instituting changes in schools that would positively hit the students, parents, community and the country in general. This system provides opportunities and avenues for joint case of all people and agencies concerned to raise the standards of the education system thereby improving school performance and learning of the students. The intention of the program is and so noble and reflects an effort to bring education system to respond to the fast changing demands of the learning community, yet a lot of areas need ingrained consideration and re-evaluation.According to Chuch Poochigian, the education system reforms undertaken in the past years have greatly enhanced the ability of the parents to mo nitor the performance of their children as well as of the school where they are enrolled, however, the only(prenominal) way that the drive for accountability in education will be truly successful is if parents utilize the sore tools offered to them to ensure that their children receive quality education. This statement should give peerless an idea that accountability should not be limited to the school sector only.According to Douglas B. Reeves (2002), accountability must be viewed in a different way. It must consider and address the issues in congruence of the objectives and the strategies, specificity, relevance, respect for diversity, continuous improvement, and focus on achievement, not norms. Accountability system is highly complex and involves a range of interconnected issues and design as well as practiced issues on the implementation and evaluation aspect that needs further original study and reconsideration.Also it must be noted that no matter how pundit or elegant the assessment devices, if the focus is limited to gathering and reportage data rather than skillful use of those data for learning and achievement enhancement of students, little improvement to school performance will result. Thus, the surmount way to know whether an accountability system is working is to see whether the school system it accounts for is moving from where it was to where it wants to be. From its first implementation, an accountability system requires not only internal implementation but also external monitoring.Indeed the national displace for accountability dignifies the need to improve standards of school performance and would greatly benefit the students but the approach is insufficient and has undesirable side effects. Schools do not per se reject accountability as the same is an intrinsic responsibility, but an authentic approach to accountability must be formulated. A new set of principles must be created to guide the reconstruction of accountability systems to repair meet the needs of education and students, and to avoid the dangers often associated with current accountability systems. Further, collaboration and supportive effort of the school, stakeholders and policymakers must be promoted.Reference ListNolan, K. (2002). Excerpts from using accountability to build strong schools. EducationCommission of States. Retrieved February 20, 2007 from http//www.ecs.orgPoochigian, C. School accountability reforms. Retrieved February 23, 2007 fromhttp//www.reasons.org/pb34.pdf.Reeves, D. (2002). Accountability based-reforms should lead to a better teaching andlearning-period. Harvard Education System. Retrieved February 20, 2007 fromhttp//www.edletter.org/past/issues2002-ma/reeves.shtml.