September 2011 | Volume 69 | Number 1
Promoting Respectful Schools
Pages 80-81
The Threat of Accountabalism
Phillip C. Schlechty
This practice has worked its way into public education, and now it's gobbling up our young.
Public education in the United States is slowly being overwhelmed by what business consultant David Weinberger calls accountabalism.1
According to Weinberger, accountabalism is "the practice of eating sacrificial victims in an attempt to magically ward off evil." He goes on to write,
Because accountability suggests that there is a right and a wrong answer to every question, it flourishes where we can measure results exactly. It spread to schools—where it is eating our young—as a result of our recent irrational exuberance about testing, which forces education to become something that can be measured precisely.
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Copyright © 2011 by ASCD