What is School Accountability

Why is Accountability Important?

Increasingly, policymakers, educators and the public are demanding that schools and districts be held accountable for student performance. In response, states are developing accountability systems that are standards-based.ÝÝ Standards-based accountability focuses on everything that goes on in the education system ñ policy, administration and practice ñ directly on teaching and learning through the following interconnected processes: defining goals, allocating authority, providing incentives, building capacity, measuring progress, reporting results and enforcing consequences.

In a standards-based system, the state role changes from ensuring compliance with regulations and processes to measuring results, providing incentives, imposing sanctions and providing assistance to build school capacity. The district role also changes and becomes one of support and technical assistance. In return for greater accountability, schools and professional staff ideally receive more flexibility and autonomy to make strategic decisions. With accountability, state officials prescribe outcomes and leave choices about instructional methods and practices to professional educators in the schools

Michiganís Accountability System:

An effective accountability system requires that all actors in the stateís education system accept responsibility for the accomplishment of specific results.Ý No single group can improve the performance of schools and students by themselves, without the support of others, but the system will only work when each group steps up and commits itself to be held accountable for the accomplishment of measurable goals.

The Accountability Task Force published a report, ìSo All Succeed:Ý Delivering the Promise of Michigan Public Schoolsî in early October 2000.Ý It establishes an action plan that each member organization can use to identify specific results for which each group is prepared to be held accountable, and to define indicators that can be used to measure those results.Ý

ìFocus on Accountabilityî describes Michiganís traditional accountability system beginning with Public Act 25, continuing to more recent standards-based accountability with school accreditation on student performance on the MEAP tests.

Michiganís Accountability Based Accreditation Ýis based on five components:Ý Assessment of All Students (participation in the assessment system),Ý High Academic Achievement (percentages of students scoring well on MEAP tests), Improvement in Student Performance (Adequate Yearly Progress), High Achievement for All Students (progress in minimizing achievement gaps),Ý School Improvement Results (reports on implementation of local plans).

The Michigan Continuous School Improvement Process Planning Guide provides a structure for the stateís goal of continuous school improvementÝ by helping districts design their continuous school improvement planning process and curriculum around their own particular size, needs, organizational structure, and resources.

The Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP) was designed to measure whether students/schools have mastered content standards.Ý Currently, the accreditation process relies on MEAP scores.