Transforming Urban Public Schools: The Role of Standards and Accountability.

Abstract

This paper examines how urban school districts that have substantially improved student performance emphasize improvement of education guided by rigorous standards for teachers rather than high-stakes testing for students. States and districts that rely on test-based accountability emphasizing sanctions for students and teachers often produce greater failure rather than success for educationally vulnerable students. The paper reviews research on various approaches to accountability and highlights successful reforms in urban settings that emphasize the use of standards for teaching and learning to guide investments in better prepared teachers, higher quality teaching, more performance-oriented curriculum and assessment, better designed schools, more equitable and effective resource allocations, and more diagnostic supports for student learning. It argues for a broader conception of accountability that focuses on whether policymakers' and practitioners' actions, in fact, produce better quality education and higher levels of learning for a greater share of students. It suggests that genuine accountability is achieved when school system policies and operating practices work both to provide good education and to correct problems as they occur. It concludes that raising standards for students so they learn what they need to know requires raising standards for the system. (Contains 69 references.) (SM) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. Transforming Urban Public Schools: The Role of Standards and Accountability Linda Darling-Hammond U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) O This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. O Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY BEST COPY AVAILABLE Ladirodimmitoni 0 4 1 TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) Transforming Urban Public Schools: The Role of Standards and Accountability Linda Darling-Hammond The education reform movement in the United States has begun to focus increasingly on the development of new standards for students: Virtually all states have begun the process of creating standards for student learning, new curriculum frameworks to guide instruction, and new assessments to test students' knowledge. President Clinton and presidential candidates Gore and Bush all proposed testing as a centerpiece of accountability reforms, and many school districts across the country are weighing in with their own versions of standards-based reform, including new curricula, testing systems, accountability mechanisms, and promotion or graduation requirements. The rhetoric of these reforms is appealing. Students cannot succeed in meeting the demands of the new economy if they do not encounter much more challenging work in school, many argue, and schools cannot be stimulated to improve unless the real accomplishments -or deficits -of their students are raised to public attention. There is certainly merit to these arguments. But will standards and tests improve schools or create educational opportunities where they do not now exist? Some proponents of standards-based reforms have envisioned that standards that express what students should know and be able to do would spur other reforms that mobilize more resources for student learning, including high quality curriculum frameworks, materials, and assessments tied to the standards; more widely available course offerings that reflect this high quality curriculum; more intensive teacher preparation and professional development guided by related standards for teaching; more equalized resources for schools; and more readily available

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 6 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.