Reform, Resistance,. .. Retreat? The Predictable Politics of Accountability in Virginia

In the 1990s, Virginia launched one of the nation's most ambitious standards-based reform efforts. Encouraged by a budding national accountability movement and motivated by conservative distrust of the public school establishment, state officials sought to clarify what students needed to know and to hold students and educators accountable for demonstrated performance. The effort to launch and then implement the state's nationally hailed Standards of Learning (SOLs) program would provide an exemplary case study of the political tensions that imperil any push for high-stakes accountability. By 2001, determining with certainty which program elements were the result of educational considerations and which were a response to political challenges would prove difficult.

These developments were particularly illuminating given Virginia's earlier experiences with high-stakes reform. In the 1970s, and again in the 1980s, Virginia adopted widely supported testing programs that called for students to master particular skills and content before graduating. On each occasion, large numbers of children failed to meet the standards initially set, but only a handful of children were ever denied diplomas. While some proponents chalked this pattern up to dramatic improvements in school quality, it can be more usefully and fully understood as a story of political accommodation and compromise. I use Virginia's extensive experiences with high-stakes accountability to examine the politics and prospects of standards-based reform. ¹ I consider the history of Virginia's experiences with standards-based reform, the effect of the Standards of Learning on student performance, and their impact on the broader culture of schooling.

The allure of standards-based reform is straightforward. Standards are a statement that--at a minimum--schools ought to teach children certain knowledge and skills and that the state should ensure that both children and schools meet minimal standards. The challenge posed by this prosaic goal is equally clear. Setting minimal performance standards means that some students, teachers, and schools will be deemed unacceptable. This poses a daunting political dilemma in a democratic society where the low- performers will have a powerful incentive to question the legitimacy of the system.

High-stakes accountability systems link rewards and punishments to demonstrated student performance in an effort to transform the quality of schooling. Such systems press students to master specified content and require educators to effectively teach that content. In such a regime, school improvement no longer rests upon individual volition or intrinsic motivation. Instead, students and teachers are compelled to cooperate by threatening a student's ability to graduate or a teacher's job security. Such transformative systems seek to harness the self-interest of students and educators to refocus schools and redefine the expectations of teachers and learners. ²

High-stakes efforts are fundamentally different from standards-based reforms that reject the coercive force of self-interest. Gentler, less threatening standards-based approaches seek to improve schooling through informal social pressures and by using tests as a diagnostic device.

In practice, the two visions of standards represent two points on a continuum. Most programs start with substantial commitment to the transformative high-stakes ideal. Over time, however, implementation begins to reveal the costs implied by such change. Support for coercive accountability then erodes while opposition coalesces. In the face of such pressure, transformative systems are generally weakened in one of five ways. Conventionally, officials (1) lower the stakes, (2) make the test easier, (3) reduce the thresholds required to pass, (4) permit some students to sidestep the required assessment, or (5) delay the implementation of the stakes. While each alteration is a response to legitimate programmatic concerns, the common thread is the manner in which it eases political resistance at the cost of weakening the coercive impact of accountability.

Ironically, the accountability systems that are the most sophisticated and most commonly hailed for their careful design are the most susceptible to the...