Educational Accountability: Investigating the Collective Capacity of a Middle School

181 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2008.The main findings of this instrumental mixed methods case study were that, in this context, external accountability led to increased attention to test scores, curriculum, and instruction. External accountability influenced the school's system of internal accountability by fostering better alignment between instruction and state curriculum standards. External accountability also influenced the school's collective capacity, particularly with respect to leadership and teachers' ability to provide more academic support to students and a more nurturing environment. At the same time, teachers had varied student expectations that deterred them from achieving even higher levels of collective instructional capacity.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD