Accountability is more than markets, missions, or mechanisms: The case of three Michigan public schools.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This dissertation attempts to describe and explain the process of accountability in Michigan public schools through an exploration of how educators and agents of accountability understand and manage their roles and responsibilities within schools and larger educational organizations. This dissertation tells the stories of three Michigan schools—two charter schools, and one traditional public school. Each school in this study presented different challenges and issues, and as a result, their accountability stories were quite different from one another.
Together the cases reveal three possible accountability environments—compounding, congruent, competing. Compounding accountability environments are characterized by multiple agents, operating with similar expectations and employing different means of achieving the same ends. Congruent accountability environments feature multiple agents working towards a similar goal, implementing comparable accountability frameworks. In compounding accountability environments multiple agents operate in an effort to support different educational visions and attempt to implement contradictory accountability frameworks.
The three cases of accountability described in this dissertation illuminate the complexity of public schools and public school reforms. The process of accountability at these schools appeared to be a function of multiple authorities and accountability systems operating simultaneously. Furthermore, these cases show that accountability systems within schools operate based upon the relationships between authorities, the attention paid to cultivating shared values, as well as the emphasis on regulation to enforce ideology.
This dissertation revealed that accountability is more than authority and mechanisms. In the schools participating in this study, accountability involved the relationships among authorities and the mechanisms that each authority endorsed. For the educators in this study, accountability was more than being subject to regulation; it involved a set of beliefs, processes, and relationships. Ultimately, this dissertation concludes that ideology, regulation, and human agency all contribute to what we commonly call accountability.