Orienting Schools Toward Equity: Subgroup Accountability Pressure and School-Level Responses

Abstract

This article examines school-level responses to subgroup accountability pressure through an ethnographic case study of a school cited for failing to make adequate yearly progress for student subgroups. Concerns about the calculations and measures used to derive the citation and reservations about acting on accountability data delegitimized the citation and rendered the identified subgroups irrelevant to daily practice. Under district guidance, compliance with subgroup accountability was independent of the school's internal efforts to promote equity.

Key words:

• accountability
• compliance
• data-driven decision making
• diversity
• equity
• policy implementation
• political aspects/governmental influence
• school districts
• subgroup accountability pressure

Acknowledgments

The author thanks the anonymous reviewers for and participants of the 2016 Sociology of Education Association conference and the participants of the 2016 New York University summer dissertation writing program in Paris for their thoughtful feedback on earlier versions of this work.

Funding

This article is based on research that was made possible in part by financial assistance from the Ruth Landes Memorial Research Fund, a program of the Reed Foundation.