The surest measure of a successful college or university is the academic success of its students. True academic success requires incoming students to be academically prepared for college rigor, and is demonstrated by the availability of high-quality academic programs and evidence of personal and professional growth in the years after students'…

This study aims to explore reimagined accountability through collective efforts initiated by school leaders and to challenge the fixed notion of accountability prescribed by policy scripts. Drawing on studies highlighting humanizing leadership and the metaphors of "agora" and "bazaar," I investigate how school leaders…

"Through-year assessments" are assessments that are administered in multiple parts and at different times over the course of a school year that also produce summative scores that can be used with state accountability systems (Lorié et al., 2021; Dadey & Gong, 2023). These assessments are alternatively known as instructionally…

I grew up on free school meals and now work as a school improvement adviser. In this article, I address discontinuities within my 'support and challenge' role, a role that can be constrained by educational policy enacted within a performative and panoptic culture of fear. Successive governments have concerned themselves with promoting equity…

In 2015, the governments of United Nations Member States agreed on an ambitious agenda for people, planet and prosperity. Support for the unprecedentedly ambitious Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations 2030 Agenda was obtained, however, on the condition that there would not be any accompanying enforcement or accountability…

Intermediary organizations' (IOs) involvement in teacher education policies has grown in recent years. Apart from advocating for the introduction of alternative routes into the teaching profession, IOs have facilitated the spread of outcomes-based teacher preparation accountability. While previous studies examined the neoliberal market-based logic…

For decades, policymakers in the U.S. have leveraged accountability policy as a governing tool to lift school performance and close the achievement gap. Accountability become so widespread that it arguably became a "policy paradigm" with the passage of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act in 2002. Yet after just 13 years of…

This paper estimates the effects of a school accountability policy on year-to-year teacher mobility in publicly and privately managed low-performing schools in Chile. As school ranking depends on the institution's relative position according to a set of variables and their corresponding thresholds, we use a multivariate regression discontinuity…

The ambiguous policy-concepts 'effectivity' and 'needs' were introduced to Finnish VET. This research utilises cultural historical activity theory to analyse how different conflicting motives emerge within student counselling and to discuss the prospective development of VET. Managerialist approaches to accountability and competency-based training…

The paper reports on a study that explored selected lecturers' perspectives and discourses on a university's Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET) policy in South Africa; particularly what the policy prioritised in terms of purpose and evaluation processes. It also reports on the lecturers' reflections on the additional questions they included in…

This article considers the motivations of teachers to pursue ongoing professional learning. During recent decades, the international policy context has been characterised by high-stakes accountability, but the implications of this agenda for teachers' motivations toward professional learning remains under-explored. In this mixed methods study,…

The study compared the Outcome Measures (OM) to the traditional Graduation Rates (GR) to ascertain if OM portrayed the performance of higher education institutions differently than GR and to determine which of the two metrics aligned better with accountability policy objectives. GR refers to the percentages of first-time, full-time students who…

The aim of this study was to explore, analyse, and critically discuss conditions for Swedish ICT coordinators working on school digitalisation in a local municipal school context. More specifically, the study draws on findings from interviews with 13 Swedish information and communication technology (ICT) coordinators working in eight…

The reduction in local control and oversight of schooling represented by the growth of Multi Academy Trusts (MATs) in England raises critical issues for public policy. These include the articulation and exercise of power in the governance of MATs, the future of democratic governance of local services and accountability. Applying Foucault's…

Purpose: Studies tracking changes in physical education (PE) policy adherence after an intervention are scarce. In California, successful litigation against 37 school districts for not providing adequate PE time compelled district schools' teachers to post PE schedules online or on-site for 3 years. We performed a follow-up study 4 years after the…