School accreditation and teacher empowerment: an Alabama case

Abstract

Teachers are pro-actively changing their schools, yet they continue to be excluded from the standards debate in education and policy reform. More attention needs to be on the places and people intimately involved in the standards movement, and on how standards shape the professional work of teachers and the school culture. This emergent Alabama case is an example of teachers' negotiating values and experiences with the powers-that-be. The story of a school's change process is used to explore the contradiction between accreditation (standards) and self-study improvement (teacher empowerment). Accreditation, a US phenomenon, is a specific educational standard for schools that acts as a form of quality control at the national and regional level. Accreditation is a ‘stamp of approval’ indicating that certain minimum standards have been met. But, accreditation is also supposed to ensure that schools have become learning organisations through a collaborative self-study process. However, the control issues involved in applying standards to schools can stifle any real change. Lessons learned call for insight into how teachers view the process of school improvement so that policy can be influenced by findings from the field.