A Canadian Perspective...

While the Ravitch summary I posted earlier this week focused on the history of accountability in the United States, it is perhaps more useful to compare it to a Canadian perspective. The Alberta Teacher’s Association offers such perspective in their paper published in 2005, which you can access here: https://lms.brocku.ca/access/content/group/f8b88833-f4b5-4afd-aa05-1f9fd8bccbb2/index.html

The idea of province wide assessment in Alberta was first introduced in 1980 with the establishment of the Provincial Student Evaluation Program. This was roughly ten years after the establishment of the NAEP in the U.S. By the mid-1980’s, both organizations were focused on using standardized assessments as a measurement of accountability in their education systems. These changes demanded increased funding, and as Ravitch suggests, accounted for about 40% of the U.S. states budgets. By 1984, standardized tests were applied to all school boards in Alberta, including a Gr. 12 exam required for students to earn their diploma.  

Alberta’s education system in the early 90’s was characterized by a change in the use of standardized tests to identify schools in need, and the placement of special needs students in regular classrooms. However, 1994 was the year of most drastic changes. A new trend of “doing more with less” due to funding cutbacks, major restructuring, the introduction of site-based management, was all echoing the efforts in the U.S. to run schools like businesses. At this time the focus remains almost solely on outputs, or test scores, rather than input.

This one-sided emphasis on output is finally challenged in 2003 and implemented in 2004, when the established Learning Commission suggests reporting includes factors such as class size, use of funding, and satisfaction surveys. The same year, the School Act is amended to enforce that teachers be responsible for grading provincial achievement tests and exams. Likewise, in the United States, teachers began to feel the increased pressure to perform and be held accountable for student achievement. It is not surprising that we see the push back by educators during these decades and in the years to follow.

Another noteworthy part of the Alberta Paper focuses on what the Teacher’s Association calls a “shared understanding and commitment to values” that educational partners must share in their efforts to improve accountability in education. They include:

1.       Fairness: everyone plays by the same rules

2.       Openness: processes for reporting and documentation, and the analysis of these results are openly discussed and displayed

3.       Respect for Diversity/Equal Educational Opportunity: recognizing each student’s unique needs and allowing school boards to determine how to best meet these needs

4.       Stewardship: sufficient and responsible use of resources

In consideration of these values, you can interpret the challenges the teachers in Alberta have faced in the era of accountability. For example, in the first value, fairness, it is clear that teachers do not feel they have been treated fairly, nor has there been consistency in the expectations they must meet. They must also feel that the process and purpose of reporting and documenting student outputs has not been clearly defined, or openly expressed, which poses further questions. And as Ravitch suggests, many teachers feel that they are asked to accomplish too much given the lack of resources they are provided by those in control, which brings down morale. All of these factors help us to better understand the history of accountability in education, in an effort to make improvements for the future, and it seems that these values are a good place to begin.