Accountability: Antecedents,Power,and Processes

Abstract

Background/Context

In the United States and abroad, public education is changing as the rhetoric of “accountability” is becoming accepted as the self-evident and self-explanatory rationale for momentous policy shifts. Epitomized by the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the U.S. government's Race to the Top, accountability is becoming a pervasive normalizing discourse, legitimizing historical shifts in educational policy from a social and cultural project of facilitating democratic citizenship to an economic project of engendering usable skills and “competences.”

Purpose

The purpose of this special issue is to provide context and perspective on these momentous shifts.

Research Design

The papers point to historic antecedents, highlight core ideas, and identify changes in the balance of power between domestic and global policy makers. The authors are interested in understanding the process by which the new policy frameworks have been constructed and legitimized and how they have changed the accepted “definition of the situation.”

Conclusions/Recommendations

An important aspect of these changes are three long-term trends: homogenizing the heterogeneous reality of education; shifting power from locally embedded education professionals to a global elite of economists and statisticians; and the move from soft guidance to hard mandates in an increasingly centralized system of governance.

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