ACCOUNTABILITY AND SCHOOL PERFORMANCE - IMPLICATIONS FROM RESTRUCTURING SCHOOLS

Many politicians and policymakers today link school accountability and school performance. Drawing on evidence from the corporate world, the y assume that strong external accountability will impel schools to imp rove student achievement. In this article, however, Fred Neumann, M. B ruce King; and Ma;rk Rigdon argue that three issues Keep this popular theory from working in practice. 1) implementation controversies aroun d standards, incentives,and constituencies; b) insufficient efforts to organize the human, technical, and social resources of a school into an effective collective enterprise - what the authors term ''organizat ional capacity'' - and c) failure to recognize the importance of inter nal school accountability. In a study of twenty-four restructuring sch ools, the authors found that strong accountability was rare; that orga nizational capacity was not related to accountability; that schools wi th strong external accountability tended to have low organizational ca pacity; and that strong internal accountability tended to reinforce a school's organizational capacity. Although the implications' of this s tudy for both accountability policy and, more broadly, school restruct uring efforts may appear disconcerting, the authors conclude with seve ral practical guidelines to stimulate the Kind of internal accountabil ity that they found to be related to enhanced school performance.