Educational Accountability and American Federalism: Moving Beyond a Test-Based Approach

This book offers important insights into the complex nature of educational accountability and its role in supporting school improvement. By developing two key concepts – educational accountability and American federalism – the book highlights various types of accountability that take place in different institutional settings.

By moving beyond the long-standing, test-based, administrative approach to accountability, the author demonstrates how professional, market, and political accountability affect teaching, learning, and educational policymaking. The book examines four accountability types: administrative accountability, professional accountability, market accountability, and political accountability. The volume questions why these accountability types vary in their development and use across the country, and considers how American federalism – national, state, and local – provides different political arenas with variation in ideas, interests, and institutions that prompt different policymaking approaches. The book concludes with a two-tier proposal for internal accountability organized around teacher professionalism and external accountability combining elements of school choice and public deliberation.

This volume will be important reading for scholars and researchers in Federalism, Education Policy, and Public Administration. It will also be beneficial reading for policymakers, think tanks, and community organizations.

John Portz is Professor of Political Science at Northeastern University, USA.