ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on high-stakes accountability policies, how accountability is not just an educational matter but a heated political one as well, and the impacts accountability has on students, schools, and teachers. It identifies ideologies that compete and exert influence in the education policymaking process. The chapter offers public policies and public schools and discusses the changing landscape around private schools. As policymakers seek cures for low-achieving schools, they increasingly look to market-based strategies that business and industry have used to maximize profitability and efficiency. As policymakers, Congress, state legislators, and local school boards pass laws and policies establishing the goals of schooling and allocating resources to achieve the goals. By the 1960s, the federal government had responded to the Brown v. Board of Education decision and the civil rights movement by seeking ways to better serve students of color. It wanted information about the harms of racial segregation that it could use to guide educational policy toward equity.
