Neoliberal School Accountability Policies and Gaming Practices By School Personnel: Consequences For Schools, Children, Teachers and Society

Professional ethics in public K-12 education requires that teachers and school administrators ethically perform the duties of their position within schools that serve to enhance the learning and welfare of their students and prepare their students for future adult roles as citizens of their society.  The traditional relationship between teachers and other school professionals has been based on organic trust (Bryk and Schneider 2002), in which teachers and other school professionals accept salaries that are lower than those earned by similarly-trained professionals in the corporate world in exchange for job security. Neoliberalism associated with globalization impose external accountability systems on schools and schooling have altered that social contract, as they assume that school personnel will not work for the welfare and learning of their students unless they are pressured to do so under the threat of draconian measures.  Within Neoliberalism, the principal indicators of school effectiveness are scores on standardized tests. Low-performing schools face closure and the termination of staff.  The current accountability systems adopted in several developed nations and increasingly considered in developing nations are thus based on a hierarchy of distrust (Dworkin and Tobe 2012).  Especially in high-poverty schools teachers and school administrators do not trust that their students will perform adequately enough on high-stakes, standardized tests to ensure their own job security.  This leads many to “game the system” by an array of techniques that give the appearance of student learning gains when such gains are fraudulent.  School teachers, administrators, and even government education agencies have been found to engage in such gaming, with the result that student learning deficiencies are not detected and students are deprived of the education they deserve.  The systems of accountability and the need to game the system adversely affect the morale of school personnel.