Reclaiming Accountability in Teacher Education

Winner of the 2019 Society of Professors of Education Outstanding Book Award

Winner of 2018 AESA Critic’s Choice Award

Teacher accountability has been a major strategy for “fixing” education for the last 2 decades. In this book, Cochran-Smith and her research team argue that it is time for teacher educators to reclaim accountability by adopting a new approach that features intelligent professional responsibility, challenges the structures and processes that reproduce inequity, and sustains multi-layered collaboration with diverse communities. The authors analyze and critique major accountability initiatives, including Department of Education regulations, CAEP accreditation procedures, NCTQ teacher preparation reviews, and edTPA, and expose the lack of evidence behind these policies, as well as the negative impact they are having on teacher education. However, the book does not conclude that accountability is the wrong direction for the next generation of teacher education. Instead, the authors offer a clear and achievable vision of accountability for teacher education based on a commitment to equity and democracy.

Book Features:

• Proposes a new approach to reclaim accountability: democratic accountability in teacher education.
• Offers a historical overview of accountability in the era of education reform.
• Embraces accountability and reconstructs its targets, purposes, and consequences in keeping with the larger democratic project.
• Introduces an accessible framework for investigating dimensions of accountability policy and practice.
• Deconstructs four of the most visible education reform initiatives relevant to teacher educators and education stakeholders.

Marilyn Cochran-Smith holds the Cawthorne Chair in Teacher Education for Urban Schools at the Lynch School of Education, Boston College. Molly Cummings Carney is a doctoral student at Boston College. Elizabeth Stringer Keefe is a teacher educator and faculty coordinator of Graduate Studies in Autism at Lesley University. Stephani Burton is a doctoral candidate at Boston College. Wen-Chia Chang is an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Measurement, Evaluation, Statistics, and Assessment at Boston College. M. Beatriz Fernández is a faculty researcher and director of a teacher preparation program at Alberto Hurtado University in Chile. Andrew F. Miller is the director of academics for the Archdiocese of Boston Catholic Schools Office. Juan Gabriel Sánchez is a doctoral candidate at Boston College. Megina Baker is a researcher on the Pedagogy of Play project at Harvard Graduate School of Education’s Project Zero.

Rethinking Accountability in Teacher Education is timely and important. It does far more than expose the limits of our current accountability model and the dire consequences of continuing to look to market-based solutions as a means to improve public education. Its most important contribution is the call to action for teacher educators to fight against these reforms and to protect the democratic promise that our strained and beleaguered system still holds.

—Teachers College Record

“Once again Cochran-Smith and her colleagues have taken on an important challenge in teacher education without polemics and defensiveness. While championing the need for accountability, they ask for "smart" accountability that places teacher education squarely in the debate about what we should expect from our teachers and the people and institutions who have responsibility for preparing them in an era of doubt about the usefulness of college and university-based teacher education. This is a book every teacher educator and dean of a school or college of education needs to have on their bookshelves. It should at the center of teacher education conversations everywhere.”
—Gloria Ladson-Billings, professor emerita, University of Wisconsin-Madison

"Reclaiming Accountability in Teacher Education is one of the most brilliant books in education, period. No one concerned about the teaching profession can afford to miss this searing analysis of the hegemonic initiatives to 'reform' teacher education in the United States today, including the lack of evidentiary basis for such initiatives and the havoc and harm that they already wreak on public education. We need to radically re-vision accountability in teacher education as we harness education for democracy, and this book offers a compelling framework for just such work. Let's get to it!"
— Kevin Kumashiro, education consultant

“In these frightening days of uncertainty, chaos, and conflict, this timely volume dares to call for hope and collective action. It suggests that teachers and teacher educators can save accountability from the negative, the narrow, and the punishingly market-driven, and reclaim it in service of democracy and equity. Cochran-Smith and her colleagues deliberately take on prevailing policy and accountability debates and imperatives to convincingly (counter)argue that when accountability is participatory, representative, and led by educators, it can serve the common good and help fulfill the democratic project that America was envisioned to be.”
—A. Lin Goodwin, Teachers College, Columbia University

“This is a very important book that exposes the lack of evidence supporting dominant accountability policies in teacher education that are linked to an agenda of deregulation, market competition, and the de-professionalization of teaching. Instead of calling for an abandonment of accountability, the authors call for reclaiming accountability in teacher education for more democratic purposes. This book is a must-read for teacher educators and policymakers.”
—Ken Zeichner, University of Washington

Tentative Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

PART I: TEACHER EDUCATION IN THE ERA OF ACCOUNTABILITY

Chapter 1. Accountability in Uncertain Times
   Reclaiming Accountability
   Accountability and Democratic Education
   The Discourses of Accountability
   A New Political Climate for Education?
   Reading this Book

Chapter 2. Teacher Education’s Era of Accountability
   The Era of Accountability
   Unprecedented Global Attention to Teacher Quality tied to Neoliberal Economics
   Continuous Public Narrative about the Failure of Teachers/Teacher Education
   Teacher Education as a Policy Problem 
   The Teacher Education Establishment’s Accountability Turn
   Education Reform as the Cure for Inequality
   Whither the Era of Accountability?

Chapter 3. The Eight Dimensions of Accountability
   Theorizing Accountability in Education and the Public Sector
   The Eight Dimensions of Accountability: A Framework for Making Sense of Accountability in Teacher Education  
   The Foundations of Accountability: Values, Purpose, and Concepts 
   The Problem of Teacher Education: Diagnostic and Prognostic Dimensions 
   Power Relationships in Accountability: Control, Content, and Consequences

PART II: THE PROBLEM WITH ACCOUNTABILITY: FOUR CASES

Chapter 4. Tug of War: Federally-Mandated Reporting  Requirements for Teacher Education
   Context: Federal Involvement in Teacher Education 
   2016 HEA/Title II Reporting Regulations: An 8-Dimensional Analysis
   HEA/Title II Reporting Regulations: Theory of Change and the Related Evidence
   Impact and Implications

Chapter 5. A Would-Be Watchdog: CAEP’s Problematic Approach to Professional Accountability
   CAEP Accreditation: A Beacon for Unified Professional Accountability?
   CAEP Accreditation: An Eight Dimensional Analysis 
   CAEP Accreditation: Theory of Change and the Related Evidence
   Impact and Implications: The Jury is Still Out 

Chapter 6. NCTQ: Shame and Blame in Market-Based Teacher Accountability
   Context: NCTQ’s History and Approach
   NCTQ's Teacher Prep Reviews: An 8-Dimensional Analysis
   NCTQ: Theory of Change and the Related Evidence 
   Impact and implications: NCTQ’s Impact on the Field?

Chapter 7. edTPA: Performance, Professionalization, and Pearson
   Context: Understanding edTPA
   edTPA: An Eight Dimensional Analysis
   Claims and Evidence: Authenticity, Improvement, & Professionalization 
   Impact and Implications: Examining edTPA’s Influence on Teacher Education
   The Uncertain Future of edTPA

PART III: RECLAIMING ACCOUNTABILITY

Chapter 8. The Problem with Accountability
   The Accountability Paradigm in Teacher Education
   The Foundations of the Accountability Paradigm 
   The Problem of Teacher Education in the Accountability Paradigm
   Power Relationships in the Accountability Paradigm 
   Rejecting the Accountability Paradigm, Preserving Accountability

Chapter 9. Democratic Accountability in Teacher Education
   The Foundations of Democratic Accountability in Teacher Education
   The Problem of Teacher Education from the Perspective of Democratic Accountability
   Power Relationships in the Democratic Approach to Teacher Education Accountability 
   Toward Democratic Accountability in Teacher Education: Promising Practices
   Now More Than Ever

References

Index

About the Authors  

2020 AACTE Outstanding Book of the Year Award

2019 Society of Professors of Education Outstanding Book Award

2019 AERA Division K Exemplary Research in Teaching and Teacher Education Award

2018 AESA Critic’s Choice Award

Marilyn Cochran-Smith won the 2018 AERA Division K Legacy Award