Discussion- Improving Educational Quality: How Best to Evaluate Our Schools?

Hanushek and Raymond have provided us with an elegant and coherent set of arguments for accountability in the public provision of education. Their main empirical contribution is the characterization of the different types of accountability systems in the United States. They go on to show how the operation of incentives in the public sector is not easy to administer and evaluate. Specifically they draw attention to the distinction between inputs, process variables, and outcomes, and they show how incentive systems reliant on input and process measurements may be ineffective. The authors find empirically that the presence of an accountability system leads to modest growth in achievement but caution that evidence needs to be treated carefully to recognize the possibility of gaming and the consequent interpretation problems. In short, they suggest that accountability incentives matter. This discussion of their paper recaps the problems with incentive structures in public provision of education and raises the issue of exactly what is meant by accountability. I also consider how the effect of accountability on achievement measurement and on performance should be assessed. Then I will provide examples of the problematic working of incentives from the U.K. education system.