Standards, Accountability, and School Reform

By Linda Darling-Hammond. Teachers College Record, 2004

636 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The standards-based reform movement has led to increased emphasis on tests, coupled with rewards and sanctions, as the basis for “accountability” systems. These strategies have often had unintended consequences that undermine access to education for low-achieving students rather than enhancing it. This article argues that testing is information for an accountability system; it is not the system itself. More successful outcomes have been secured in states and districts, described here, that have focused on broader notions of accountability, including investments in teacher knowledge and skill, organization of schools to support teacher and student learning, and systems of assessment that drive curriculum reform and teaching improvements.

Subfields: Education, Information Systems and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f979a484551a3ceef9f766492b3ed80f9e17e557

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Education

In Information Systems and Management

Citations in the corpus

Disentangling the Roles of Institutional and Individual Poverty in the Identification of Gifted Students (2018, background): “…schools serving primarily poor students experience difficulty recruiting and retaining effective teachers with prior experience (Mangiante, 2011), and a disproportionate number of underqualified and inexperienced teachers tend to be placed in low-income schools (Darling-Hammond, 2004; Krei, 1998).”
The New Literacies of Online Research and Comprehension: Rethinking the Reading Achievement Gap (2015, background): “This is not to say that this approach is desired; it is, though, a recognition of the realities that currently exist with such a heavy emphasis on testing in our classrooms (Darling-Hammond, 2004).”
Pedagogy for Developing Critical Thinking in Adolescents: Explicit Instruction Produces Greatest Gains. (2011, background): “It has been asserted that much of the mandated high-stakes testing forces teachers to overly concentrate on lower-order thinking skills (ADP, 2004; Darling-Hammond, 2004; Neill, 2003).”
New Immigrants, New Challenges: High School Social Studies Teachers and English Language Learner Instruction (2008, background): “Some of these barriers are due to the previously mentioned economic changes; others are due to the way academic success is currently defined in federal and state education policies (Darling-Hammond 2004; McNeil 2000), with further barriers resulting from current immigrant settlement patterns.”
The Effects of Education Accountability on Teachers: Are Policies Too-Stress Provoking for Their Own Good?. (2009, methodology): “This represents an investment in improving the quality of teaching, a variable that has been more effective in the improvement of academic achievement than implementation of student testing (Darling-Hammond, 2000, 2004).”
The Impact of High School Size on Math Achievement and Dropout Rate (2009, background): “School size research often suggests that smaller school size plays an important part of increased student learning (Darling-Hammond, 2004; Lee & Smith, 1997, 1999; Cotton, 1996).”
At-Risk Students’ Perceptions of Traditional Schools and a Solution-Focused Public Alternative School (2011, result): “This is consistent with previous studies that have found that teacher support is highly correlated with academic motivation and achievement and is even more influential than class size or composition (Darling-Hammond, 2004; Tuerk, 2005).”
Principles for literacy assessment (2005, background): “…lately been supported by arguments that it will reduce literacy achievement differences associated with race and poverty, there is evidence that the long-term effect of such testing is to create a curriculum that extends stratification rather than reducing it (Darling-Hammond, 2004; McNeil, 2000).”
A Case Study of Principal Leadership in an Effective Inclusive School (2013, background): “…accountability has led to mandates from many states that have produced systems to evaluate or grade schools based on these outcome measures, resulting in significant pressure on teachers and principals to improve student outcomes or be subjected to punitive measures (Darling-Hammond, 2004).”
“Double-Dose” Algebra as an Alternative Strategy to Remediation: Effects on Students' Academic Outcomes (2009, background): “1 However, raising requirements without sufficient support mechanisms could lead more students to fail and drop out (Darling-Hammond, 2004).”
The effects of distributed leadership on teacher professional learning: mediating roles of teacher trust in principal and teacher motivation (2020, background): “…the link between teacher learning and student outcomes and overall school improvement (Barth 1990; Borko 2004; Lieberman 1995, 2000; Little 1990, 1993; Darling-Hammond 2000, 2004; Darling-Hammond and McLaughlin 1999; DuFour 2004; Hargreaves 1994, 1998; Putnam and Borko 2000; Opfer and Pedder 2011).”