School board member definitions of accountability. A comparison of charter and traditional public school board members
| Pages | 280-296 |
| Published date | 02 May 2017 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/JEA-04-2016-0040 |
| Date | 02 May 2017 |
| Author | Michael R. Ford,Douglas M. Ihrke |
| Subject Matter | Education,Administration & policy in education,School administration/policy,Educational administration,Leadership in education |
School board member definitions
of accountability
A comparison of charter and traditional
public school board members
Michael R. Ford
Department of Public Administration, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh,
Oshkosh, Wisconsin, USA, and
Douglas M. Ihrke
University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to determine the differing ways in which nonprofit charter and
traditional public school board members define the concept of accountability in the school or schools they
oversee. The findings speak to the governing consequences of shifting oversight of public education from
democratically elected bodies to unelected nonprofit governing boards.
Design/methodology/approach –The authors use originally collected survey data from democratically
elected school board members and nonprofit charter school board members in Minnesota to test for
differences in how these two populations view accountability. Open-ended survey questions are coded
according to a previously used accountability typology.
Findings –The authors find that charter school board members are more likely than traditional public
school board members to define accountability through high stakes testing as opposed to staff
professionalization and bureaucratic systems.
Originality/value –The results speak to the link between board governance structure and accountability in
the public education sector, providing new understanding on the way in which non-elected charter school
board members view their accountability function.
Keywords Governance, Charter schools, Accountability
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Since Minnesota passed the US first charter school law in 1991, the number of American
students receiving a publicly funded education via a charter school has increased
dramatically. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), there are
currently over 6,000 charter schools operating in the USA. The majority of American charter
schools are nonprofit corporations overseen by an appointed board of directors.
The presence of an appointed board stands in stark contrast to the traditional democratic
governance model used by the overwhelming majority of the more than 13,500 school
districts operating in the USA. But the charter school movement specifically, and the
education governance reform movement broadly, is not limited to the USA. At least
14 countries outside of the USA have charter-style schools (Brewer and Hentschke, 2009).
Great Britain and Canada in particular are active in challenging traditional approaches to
public education (Barber, 2013; Vergari, 2013; Reimer, 2015).
The common thread in charter-style education reforms acrosscontexts is the redefiningof
the notion of accountability. For much of the history of universal public elementary and
secondary education systems, accountability has meant answering to some type of elected
official or body (Kirst, 2008). What exactly school systems are to be held accountable for, i.e.
fiscal transparency, academicoutcomes, etc. is a frequentmatter of debate, but the presenceof
a democratic accountability mechanism has remained mostly c onstant (Finn and Petrilli, 2013).
Even dramaticeducation reforms such asmayoral control initiatives are premisedon the idea
Journal of Educational
Administration
Vol. 55 No. 3, 2017
pp. 280-296
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0957-8234
DOI 10.1108/JEA-04-2016-0040
Received 11 April 2016
Revised 24 October 2016
Accepted 3 November 2016
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0957-8234.htm
280
JEA
55,3
of a single democratically elected official that can be held accountable for a school system’s
performance via the ballot box (Viteritti, 2009). How ever, the growth of voucher and
charter school systems have challenged the foundations of democratic educational
accountability. The charter school idea is premised on shifting the accountability function
away from democratically elected school boards, which are formal institutions responsive
to the public’s will, and toward contracts between private organizations and authorizing
entities. The rationale for this accountability shift is the promise of increased performance.
However, while charter schools have shown success in certain locales, in general there is little
evidence that charter schools on aggregate result in substantively higher levels of academic
achievement for students (Miron and Nelson, 2002; Witte et al., 2012; Ravitch, 2010a, 2013;
Clark et al., 2015). Chingos and West (2015), for example, report wide variations in the
performance of Arizona charters schools, a finding consistent with Ford and Ihrke (2015)
conclusionthat the success of hollow state reforms, likecharter schools, are dependent on the
organizations involved.
Indeed, as Mintrop (2012), Mintrop and Trujillo (2007), and Seel and Gibbons (2012)
discuss, the connection between governance, accountability, and performance is dependent
on implementation and buy-in from school-level actors and their surrounding communities.
In other words, the interpretation of the meaning of accountability is relevant to the
successful use of accountability as a means to improve schools and systems. Yet in
the American charter school context there remains a significant accountability blind spot
regarding charter school board members. No research has asked what the individuals
governing nonprofit charter schools actually think about accountability. The broad notion
of charter accountability through the use of school authorizers is oft-studied and -discussed
(see Hill, 2013), but understanding the specifics of accountability in the eyes of board
members can speak to the local implementation of accountability in ways that are relevant
to making it an actionable meaningful concept.
Given the growth of nonprofit charter schools as a mechanism for delivering publicly
funded education, the demonstrated differences in governance behaviors on charter and
traditional school boards (see Stone et al., 2012; Ford and Ihrke, 2015, 2016), the importance
of accountability to the premise of charter schools, and charter school policy’s mixed record
of performance, there is a need to address the charter school board member accountability
blind spot. Barghaus and Boe (2011) specifically speak to the need for more comparative
research on the differences in accountability in the charter and traditional public school
sectors. Focus is placed on board members, because in both the public education sector and
the nonprofit charter school sector, board members are the individuals charged with
overseeing the delivery of a publicly funded education, and responsible for ensuring the
delivery is done in an accountable manner (Young, 2002, Berry and Howell, 2005; Hess and
Leal, 2005). Accordingly, the analysis builds on existing research on accountability and
charter schools by answering two research questions:
RQ1. How do charter and traditional school board members define accountability?
RQ2. Do charter and traditional school board members define accountability differently,
and if so, do they do so in predictable ways? Specifically, are charter school board
members more likely to have a high-stakes definition of accountability consistent
with the charter school model of accountability for performance?
The research questions are answered by asking nonprofit charter school and traditional
public school boardmembers in Minnesota a simple openended question: How do you define
accountability as it relates to academic outcomes? We then code the responses based on the
education governance accountability framework developed by Ford and Ihrke (2015),
and use the coding to determine if board members defineaccountability differently by sector
even after controlling for board member and school district demographic variables.
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How School
Board Members
Define
Accountability
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