Political Risk-Taking: Leading Literacy Education in an Era of High-Stakes

faculty at the University at Buffalo, she was a curriculum administrator in Wisconsin. Her research agenda focuses on issues related to instructional leadership and the impact of current reading policies. Political Risk-taking 2 We are currently in an era of high-stakes accountability where federal and state policies impose severe consequences on schools that fail to make adequate progress on achievement tests. This high-stakes accountability environment places enormous pressures on educators to teach to the test, adopt “canned”, traditional approaches or programs, and in other ways, submit to deskilling. At considerable risk, some individuals, schools, and districts do not submit to these political accountability pressures but engage in practices they determine are most effective in their particular settings. This article draws on data from a multi-case study of curriculum directors that investigated what happens in districts that makes educators willing to take risks and resist the pressures of high-stakes tests and traditional ideology. Specifically, the findings suggest four conditions that support political risk taking in the current political era of high-stakes accountability