The Politics of Accountability: Assessing Teacher Education in the United States

Abstract

Currently there are multiple teacher education reform policies being proposed, piloted, and debated at a variety of levels and by various interest groups, stakeholders, and policy-makers. Along with an unprecedented sense of urgency about these important goals, what most U.S. reforms have in common is increased accountability. Using a discourse approach to policy analysis, which we label “the politics of policy,” this article analyzes three complicated and evolving contemporary accountability initiatives in the United States: (1) “Our Future, Our Teachers,” which is the Obama administration's proposed blueprint for the reform of teacher education programs, in particular its call for the assessment of preparation programs based on the impact of program graduates on their eventual K–12 students’ test scores; (2) the “Teacher Performance Assessment,” which is a nationally accessible instrument for assessing beginning teaching performance currently being piloted in 25 states through a partnership of Stanford University and Pearson Education, Inc.; and, (3) “Building Better Teachers: A National Review of Teacher Preparation Programs,” which is an evaluation of collegiate teacher preparation programs conducted by the National Council on Teacher Quality with results to appear in U.S. News and World Report. Our analysis makes clear that policy (and policy proposals) is unavoidably political, and that policy-making involves contentious debate as well as complicated political maneuvering and strategies, including resistance and litigation.

Key words:

• Building Better Teachers
• Our Future Our Teachers
• teacher education policy
• Teacher Performance Assessment
• value-added assessments.

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to John Furlong, Penelope Earley, Nicholas Michelli, and Ana Maria Villegas for comments on early drafts of this article. Massachusetts TPA field-test sites are Boston College, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Boston, Dartmouth, and Lowell. The authors spoke informally to teacher educators at four of these institutions. Although they were not conducting an in-depth study, they did operate with IRB approval and informed consent of those who spoke with them.