The Capability for Enhancing Accountability

Abstract

Enhancing accountability is a key aspect of current demands for school reform. Much externally driven accountability has not been effective, and internally motivated accountability requires specific organizational capacities. This article examines one poor, rural southeastern American school district to high-light the barriers to effective accountability in a low-achieving district. The study concludes that current accountability models are incapable of altering local practices where needs are probably beyond the scope of educational policy making. Five themes are identified as a set of interrelated micro (district only) and macro (local community) factors affecting efforts at reform. These include racial discord, the power of poverty, the leadership mess, missing ingredients, and unidentified urgency, which together create a dysfunctional local cultural capital that results in an inability to foment significant change. Affecting any of these issues in isolation will not dramatically transform the stifling culture, as change will require altering the micro and macro themes in tandem.

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