School Accountability

There is a great deal going on in education involving accountability and finance. There always is! Increased accountability and reduced resources is nothing new, but always unsettling.

In his landmark book, Education and the Cult of Efficiency, Raymond Callahan (1962) exposed the lengths to which school administrators went, particularly in the period from 1910 to 1950, in sacrificing educational goals to the demands of business.

Callahan stated:
I am now convinced that very much of what has happened in American education since 1900 can be explained on the basis of the extreme vulnerability of our schoolmen to public criticism and pressure and that this vulnerability is built into our pattern of local support and control. (p. viii)

In a follow-up to Callahan’s classic, William Eaton included in his 1990 book, Shaping the superintendency: A reexamination of Callahan and the cult of efficiency, a quote, from Edwin O’Connor’s 1956 novel, The Last Hurrah, that says “Reforming education is akin to politics and runs a close second to politics as the nation’s greatest spectator sport” (cited in Eaton, 1990, p. 115).

Eaton goes on to say,
Periodically, the public press, supported by the politicians, seizes upon education as the scapegoat for some national difficulty and demands reform of the public schools. . . .Whatever is the matter with the United States, the public schools may be blamed. (p. 115)

Callahan, R. E. (1962). Education and the cult of efficiency: A study of the social forces that have shaped the administration of the public schools. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Eaton, W. E. (Ed.). (1990). Shaping the superintendency: A reexamination of Callahan and the cult of efficiency. New York: Teachers College Press.