POLICY COMMENTARY and BOOK REVIEW

Educational Administration Quarterly
Vol. 42, No. 2 (April 2006) 256-284

10.1177/0013161X05279449
Educational Administration Quarterly
Maxcy / POLICY COMMENTARY AND BOOK REVIEW
POLICY COMMENTARY and BOOK REVIEW
Brendan D. Maxcy
Leaving Children Behind: How Texas-Style Accountability Fails Latino

Youth, edited by Angela Valenzuela. Albany: State University of New
York Press, 2005.
Background: Leaving Children Behind: How Texas-Style Accountability Fails Latino

Youth, edited by Angela Valenzuela, presents federal-, state-, district-, and school-level re-
search on the effects of performance accountability systems featuring high-stakes testing on
Latina/Latino students. Drawing on empirical work from studies in Texas and California, the
authors argue forcefully that the state policy systems purported to eliminate longstanding in-
equities in educational services provided poor and minority students are instead creating
perverse incentives that exacerbate the achievement gap for language minority students and
others.
Purpose: In this book review and policy commentary, the reviewer examines the evidence
provided in various chapters, offering an array of perspectives on the policy, politics, and
effects on practice of what the authors term Texas-style accountability.
Analysis and Findings: Reconsidering the portrayal of this type of system as a Texas
phenomenon foisted on the nation through the No Child Left Behind legislation, perfor-
mance accountability is situated in a broader public-sector reform movement, termed
New Public Management (NPM) by Hood (1991).
Conclusions: The reviewer suggests that Leaving Children Behind is important reading
for practicing administrators, those who prepare them, and those who make and research
educational policy.
Keywords: performance accountability; New Public Management; school leadership
Truth in advertising, although admirable, may not always be an advisable

marketing ploy. As you might gather, Leaving Children Behind: How
Authors Note: I would like to thank William R. Black, Margaret Grogan, Thu Suong Thi
Nguyen, Jay D. Scribner, and Jay P. Scribner for their helpful comments on the initial draft of this
article.
DOI: 10.1177/0013161X05279449
2006 The University Council for Educational Administration
256
Downloaded from eaq.sagepub.com at NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIV on April 16, 2015
Maxcy / POLICY COMMENTARY AND BOOK REVIEW 257
Texas-Style Accountability Fails Latino Youth makes no attempt to be fair

and balanced, if that term refers to a neutral above-the-fray elaboration of
the pros and cons of the form of performance-based accountability practiced
in Texas. The title accurately reflects what the reader will find between the
covers. Through substantive empirical work, the authors present an incisive
polemic and thus may turn off some readers who have already taken a side or
wish to hear both (or better said, the many) sides of the accountability argu-
ment. But, the critique of Texas-style accountability offered is neither dis-
missive of accountability, nor a defense of the status quo from the so-called
educational establishment, nor a romanticization of the halcyon days
before high-stakes testing. Emerging from this sustained and substantive cri-
tique of the progenitor of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is, in my
opinion, a far more balanced version of accountability, termed reciprocal
accountability by one contributor, than the more limited form often deemed
adequate.
When asked to review the book for Educational Administration Quar-
terly, I accepted eagerly in part because it entitled me to a free copy of a book I
was about to purchase anyway. As a former Texas school teacher and recent
graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, I am personally acquainted
with a number of the contributors and familiar with the work of many of the
others. I have been understandably impressed with the scholarship, activism,
and commitment of these individuals to Texas public education in general
and to those communities traditionally underserved by it, in particular. Thus,
the review that follows is not that of a detached, objective observer, and upon
finding my name among those in the Acknowledgments, I felt obligated to
offer some sort of disclaimer. So, in strict accordance with a central tenet of
the text: The review offered below is a single indicator of the merit of the
work. The reader is cautioned to use multiple, compensatory criteria to trian-
gulate this account. You might read it, encourage several colleagues to read
it, and then discuss it among yourselves.
That said, I will try to make a case below for reading the book as follows.
First, I briefly review the content of the chapters that provide an array of per-
spectives on policy, politics, and effects on practice of what the authors term
Texas-style accountability (TSA). The material in these chapters may be
illuminating for those from states where NCLB mandates are newer. Recon-
sidering the portrayal of this style of accountability as a Texas phenomenon
foisted on the nation through NCLB, I attempt to situate performance
accountability in a broader, arguably global, public administration reform
movement with roots in the United States and United Kingdom. This move-
ment, termed New Public Management (NPM) by Christopher Hood (1991),
represents a sustained and incisive challenge to public sector provision of
258 Educational Administration Quarterly
public services, including but not limited to education, health care and social
services, prisons, and national defense. Locating accountability reforms with
NPM, I will use insights gleaned from Leaving Children Behind to make a
case that the book is important reading for practicing administrators, those
who prepare them, and those who make and research educational policy.
OVERVIEW OF THE CHAPTERS
After a brief review of scholarship and activism concerning Texas educa-

tion generally and bilingual education particularly, the editor, Angela
Valenzuela, uses the introduction to locate the book within an ongoing debate
on TSA featured in Phi Delta Kappan in 2000 and 2001 (see Scheurich &
Skrla, 2001; Scheurich, Skrla, & Johnson, 2000; Valencia, Valenzuela, Sloan,
& Foley, 2001). Where the earlier conversation argued the pros and cons in
brief, this text offers a broader and deeper critique of TSA, the performance-
based accountability system that informs the federal NCLB (see Bush,
2001). As the title suggests, the central focus of the critique is the problematic
effect of TSA on educational services for Latina/Latino students, particularly
for English language learners (ELL). The negative consequences discussed
are not limited to these students, however. The objective of the text is to reex-
amine claims by some that TSA offers a lever for social justice (Skrla,
Scheurich, Johnson, & Koschoreck, 2001). Responding to arguments offered
by Scheurich and his colleagues, Valenzuela outlines the guiding assump-
tions running through the critique of TSA, including the following:
Accountability must not be equated with the high-stakes testing of students,

whereby reform is leveraged on the back of the students failed by longstanding
structural inequality in the educational system.
It is inappropriate and unethical to use a single indicator to make high-stakes
decisions concerning student achievement, notably graduation or grade pro-
motion decisions, whereby students are effectively punished for a lack of
access to equitable or effective schooling.
The exacerbation of the educational disadvantages visited on our most vulner-
able students documented in this book (e.g., curricular narrowing, pedagogical
de-skilling, promotion of linguistically and culturally subtractive educational
practices, etc.) should not be understood as unfortunate but isolated incidents,
but rather as the predictable (and in many cases, predicted) outcomes of a
single-indicator, high-stakes testing system.
Valenzuela uses these themes to introduce and tie together the chapters.
In the second chapter, Jorge Ruiz de Velasco examines assumptions under-
lying federal (NCLB) and state (TSA) performance-based accountability
systems focused on typical students, which fail to hold and pose substantial
problems for ELL students. Specifically, he notes a host of ill-fitting assump-
tions concerning the linguistic and cultural resources of ELL students and the
current organizational capacity or the capacity of schools to adapt programs
and practices to effectively serve ELL students. In light of these gaps, he
questions the appropriateness of TSA to improve educational services for
ELL populations. To close the gaps, Ruiz de Velasco sketches a federal
research agenda to better inform ELL-related policy, suggests greater atten-
tion to exemplary programs serving ELL students, and calls for professional
development targeted to ELL needs. He also argues for a federal role ensur-
ing reciprocal accountability, whereby state and district leaders are also
accountable to students, teachers, and parents for ensuring equitable oppor-
tunities to learn.
In Chapter 3, Linda McNeil contributes to an ongoing invective against
TSA by a number of scholars (see also Haney, 2000; Klein, Hamilton,
McCaffrey, & Stecher, 2000; McNeil, 2000; Waite, Boone, & McGhee,
2001). Highly skeptical about the grand claims of TSA, she raises a number
of questions related to the substance of the achievement gains and the closure
of the achievement gap, perverse incentives and associated loopholes con-
tributing to exclusionary practices disproportionately visited on poor and
non-White students, and the reinforcement of structural inequality through
curriculum narrowing aimed at test preparation, especially in traditionally
underserved communities. Of the chapters, this, entitled Faking Equity, is
the most biting, denouncing the system as a public relations scheme that is
flawed, fraudulent and harmful to children (p. 102).
The fourth chapter by Richard Valencia and Bruno Villarreal examines the
phasing in of high-stakes consequences for primary and middle school stu-
dents as grade promotion becomes contingent on passing the state tests at the
third grade in 2002-2003, fifth grade in 2004-2005, and eighth grade by
2007-2008. The authors note the strong push for the policy by then-governor
Bush, despite a vast body of research that grade retention (a) demonstrated
little or no positive effect and often negative effects on achievement, (b) con-
sistently resulted in a disparate effect on low-income and non-White stu-
dents, and (c) was a strong predictor of dropping out of school. Valencia and
Villarreal argue the grade promotion policy is informed by and reinforcing of
deficit thinking (Valencia, 1997) with regard to poor and non-White stu-
dents. Looking at the projected effect according to the states figures and the
recent effect of a similar policy in Louisiana, the authors conclude that the
policy is fatally flawed as an intervention and unethical in electing to subject
students to negative consequences prior to redressing well-known structural
inequalities.
Moving from projections to consequences, the next three chapters look at

school-level effects of TSA. Kris Sloans critical ethnographic work reported
in the fifth chapter suggests a dramatic shift in practice as one predominately
low-income, Latina/Latino school begins to play to the logic of TSA.
According to the author, the district in which the school operates, applauded
in prior years for across-the-board gains in test scores, begins to shift focus
from reform to ratings. Based on extensive observations (3 days a week over
the school year) and interviews, he documents a decided shift associated with
a newly mandated district blueprint to enhance student achievement as
measured by the state tests: instructional time increasingly given over to test
preparation; the curriculum narrowed substantially to emphasize material
covered by the test; teachers de-skilled and demoralized with the institution
of impoverished instructional techniques by district specialists; and student-
teacher relationships eroded as teachers became more narrowly focused on
academic growth. Most disturbing is that the study reveals an emergent or
intensifying tendency among teachers and administrators to identify students
with different needs (i.e., ELL, special education) as impediments to
school improvement. According to Sloan, the increased ratings focus failed
to address and perhaps intensified deficit thinking of the predominately
White, middle-class teachers toward their students.
The findings on school-level effects are extended in the sixth chapter by
Elaine Hampton, drawing from a larger study of the effect of high-stakes test-
ing in districts on either side of the TexasNew Mexico border near El Paso.
Through surveys, focus group interviews, and student-teacher observations,
she reports on teacher and administrator perceptions of the effect of TSA on
the curriculum, the school climate, and ultimately the students in three mid-
dle and nine elementary schools. Consistent with Sloans findings, the educa-
tors in Hamptons study report the channeling of instructional time and nar-
rowing of the curriculum to tested material covered, as well as increased
alignment of instructional materials to the testing formats. The study reveals
a bubble student phenomenon as school personnel target effort on students
clustered near the passing standard at the expense of those further above or
below the line. A consequent backlash is suggested in an expression of
resentment by a teacher-parent of a high-achieving student, claiming
reverse discrimination.
Reminding us that neither TSA nor concerns related to ELL are uniquely
Texas phenomena, the seventh chapter by Laura Amarillo, Deborah Palmer,
Celia Viramontes, and Eugene Garcia examines the intersection of a number
of English-only policies and programs in California: Proposition 227 of
1998 mandating English-only instruction, the states English-only account-
ability program instituted in 1999, and increased mandates for heavily
scripted English-only reading programs (e.g., Open Court, Success for All,
etc.) among California school districts. The discussion of policy making ech-
oes the themes identified in the fourth chapter. Like Valencia and Villarreal,
Amarillo et al. document the passage of policies despite seemingly clear and
convincing evidence that these would visit a disproportionately negative
effect on 1.5 million language minority students, 25% of the California pub-
lic school enrollment. After reviewing these policies and programs, the
authors attempt to ascertain the subsequent effects in schools that maintained
and those that eliminated bilingual programs. With regard to effects, the
authors identify effects similar to those reported in the chapters by Sloan and
Hampton. They find a supplementary curriculum directed to test prepara-
tion, choking off time for bilingual instruction. Teacher autonomy and
morale decline as increased testing in English and adoption of scripted
instructional programs emerge. The authors conclude that the slate policies
and programs hasten the transition of language minority students to English-
only instruction and increase the prevalence of subtractive schooling
(Valenzuela, 1999), whereby linguistic resources of ELL students are
allowed to decay or, worse, are treated as impediments to achievement.
In addition to consistent findings with regard to changes in curriculum,
pedagogy, and climate, the authors of these chapters reveal interesting con-
trasts between teacher and administrator in attitudes toward TSA and associ-
ated effects. The administrators in Sloans study appear to appreciate the
increased instructional focus and administrative control offered by the test-
ing system. Teachers, in contrast, held largely negative views of the effect of
the test on the craft and content of their teaching and on their relationships
with students. Paralleling Sloans findings, the West Texas teachers inter-
viewed by Hampton report frustration and morale erosion in the wake of the
strong testing focus, whereas administrators laud the increased focus, better
curricular alignment, and better targeting and remediation of curricular defi-
ciencies. Amarillo et al. note similarly divergent views between teachers and
administrators, if administrators held no prior philosophical commitment to
bilingual education. Principals with a prior commitment seemed to share
negative views and a sense of powerlessness with teachers. Thus, commit-
ment to bilingual education mediated the feelings toward the policies, but the
principals mediation of the policies appeared to be limited.
Returning to Texas in the eighth chapter, Belinda Bustos Flores and Ellen
Riojas Clark raise concerns related to higher education responses to TSA
pressures, specifically effects on the preparation of bilingual teachers to meet
the states growing demand. In this case, the authors are troubled by dubious
protective strategies used by a teacher preparation program to screen out oth-
erwise qualified candidates who may underperform on the states
certification exam. Although state policy now prohibits these specific prac-
tices, Flores and Clark remind us that higher education, like its primary and
secondary counterparts, is sensitive to accountability pressures and can fall
prey to perverse incentives resulting from simplistic and narrowly drawn
accountability policies.
The similar responses across states and among institutional levels may
reflect an imbalance in the relative influence of a culture of measurement
over a culture of engagement as discussed in the following chapter by Ray-
mond Padilla. The measurement culture, emphasizing hierarchy of individu-
als, languages, and culture, emanates from an absolutist ontology that pro-
motes assimilation. The other, emphasizing the historical, transient, mutable
nature of language, culture, and society, works from a pluralistic and condi-
tional ontology that values diversity and syncretism. Padilla argues that the
current sociopolitical environment continues to privilege the former over the
latter, reinforcing the deficit thinking that informs TSA and naturalizes the
subtractive practices noted throughout the book.
Valenzuela closes the book by recasting TSA as a stage-setting maneuver
in a longer term privatization agenda, which, she argues, surfaced prominently
during Texas legislatures 78th session in 2003, following a shift from Demo-
cratic to Republican leadership of the Texas House and Senate. She discusses
proposed legislation and lobbying efforts related to a series of bills dramati-
cally expanding the availability of school vouchers and helping to underwrite
home-schooling through provisions for textbooks and purchases of online
curricular materials through so-called virtual charter schools. Lobbying
against privatization were various constituencies of what is often termed the
educational establishment, including members of the academy (Valenzuela
testified herself), district representatives, and teacher unions. She argues that
efforts to bolster the public school case by invoking pro-TSA arguments
often backfired as parents dismissed the data and the technicist case
offered. In contrast to the more predictable positioning of privatization advo-
cates and opponents, she reports that the participation of parents and commu-
nity members was more complex and notes some fractures within tradition-
ally unified advocacy groups. Whereas some parents spoke on behalf of the
schools, manyand perhaps, not surprising, those from communities tradi-
tionally underserved by public educationstrongly supported the voucher
option. She recounts the applause elicited by Milton Friedman as he casti-
gated those in charge of government schools for pursuing their own inter-
ests at the expense of its clients. Boos and hisses directed at some antivoucher
witnesses who attributed school failure to low parental involvement under-
scored growing frustration of parents and community members with per-
ceived deflection and shifting of blame by many within public education.
As a group, the contributors to Leaving Children Behind examine the

macro-level politics of the crafting, adoption, and public relations of account-
ability policy and then trace the effects to problematic and predictable
responses at the local level. The accounts offered are intriguing and often
exasperating. In the following section, I will attempt to glean some insights
from the book for educational administration more generally by examining
the findings within the context of the NPM movement.
THE ELEMENTS OF TEXAS-STYLE

ACCOUNTABILITY
Texas-style accountability emerged in a period when educational admin-

istration and public administration generally was suffering a crisis of legiti-
macy (Foster, 1980). Waves of reform from the late 1970s to the present
have aimed at improving performance, increasing responsiveness, and rees-
tablishing public confidence through systemic intensification, restructuring,
and performance monitoring. In the decade in which TSA was coming into
its own, a number of scholars argued that efforts to fundamentally restructure
school governance had failed to alter the core technologies of curriculum and
instruction (Elmore, 1995; Fullan, 1995). Fullan argued that reculturing must
accompany restructuring if student achievement gains were to be realized
through school improvement efforts. Performance accountability, of which
TSA is one form, became the dominant model of school reform by the end of
the 1990s (Cibulka & Derlin, 1998). According to some, the managerial-
oriented reforms have had a dramatic effect on the culture of schooling. The
following section looks at the emergence of high levels of performativity
(Lyotard, 1984) associated with performance-based accountability.
Managerial Reform in Public Schooling

Offered as bona fides of his compassionate brand of conservatism, Texas-
style accountability drew national scrutiny in George W. Bushs 2000 presi-
dential campaign as a means to close the achievement gap (see Grissmer,
Flanagan, Kawata, & Williamson, 2000; Haney, 2000; Klein et al., 2000). As
its working logics strongly informed reauthorization of the federal Elementary
and Secondary School Act, termed the No Child Left Behind Act (see Bush,
2001), TSA became an ongoing concern for U.S. educators and policy makers.
Although the political fortunes of both prospered there, Texas is no more the
birthplace of TSA than of the current president. Critiques of reforms echoing
those of TSA have been coming out of England and Wales (Ball, 1994;
Bottery, 2003; OSullivan, 2005), Denmark (Moos, 2003), Australia (Bates,

1996), New Zealand (Court, 2004), the Pacific Rim (Luke, 2002), and Canada
(Levin, 2005; Mawhinney, 2005; Ungerleider, 2005). Although the contexts
vary widely, many elements of and responses to the reforms are common.
Arguably, Stephen Ball has been one of the most strident critics of these
managerial-oriented reforms. Over the past 15 years, he has documented the
installation of a new but highly problematic culture of performativity through
British educational reforms under the Thatcher and Major governments
(Ball, 1990a; Ball, 1994, 2003). Displacing an earlier welfarist discourse
emphasizing redistribution and social justice, these reforms reflected and
reinforced a new managerialist discourse emphasizing smooth and efficient
implementation of aims set outside the school within constraints also set out-
side the school (Gewirtz & Ball, 2000, p. 255). According to Ball (2003),
The installation of the new culture of competitive performativity involves the

use of a combination of devolution, targets and incentives to bring about new
forms of sociality and new institutional forms. (p. 219)
This new managerialism transforms the culture of schools through systems

of no hands control, which standardize, normalize, and manage the work of
students, teachers, and administrators. The result is a culture of perform-
ativity (Ball, 2003), in which
the potential for inauthenticity and meaninglessness is increasingly an every-

day experience for all. The activities of the new technical intelligentsia, of
management, drive performativity into the day-to-day practices of teachers
and into the social relations between teachers. They make management, ubiq-
uitous, invisible, inescapablepart of and embedded in everything we do. In-
creasingly, we choose and judge our actions and they are judged by others on
the basis of their contribution to organizational performance, rendered in terms
of measureable outputs. (p. 223)
Like Ball, Mike Bottery (2003) suggests a low-trust environment generated

by the British reforms emphasizing micromanagement and monitoring that
locks managers and workers in a vicious circle of mutual distrust, engenders
an excess of performativity among members, decreases the transparency of
the organization, and diverts effort and energy away from internal needs and
toward external demands. Thus, although reculturing occurs, the culture of
unhappiness that emerges does not foster the sort of organizational learning
Fullan (1995) and others (Leithwood & Jantzi, 1990; Louis, Marks, & Kruse,
1996; Marks & Louis, 1999; Scribner, Cockrell, Cockrell, & Valentine,
1999) advocate.
The Art of Governance and the New Public Management
To theorize the microphysics of domination reflected in these manage-

rial reforms, Ball draws on Foucaults (1991) work on the development and
deployment of government rationality or governmentality (see also
Foucault, 1977, 1978, 1980). This work centered on an ever-evolving art of
government aimed at disciplining the individual and population in the inter-
est of economy and productivity. Identified by Foucault as a defining theme
of modernity, governmentality is not new but is continuously promoted anew
and reenacted in new and powerful ways. According to Foucault (1980), one
clearly articulated form was Frederick Taylors (1998) scientific manage-
ment, promoted as a means to eliminate our larger wastes of human effort
which go on every day through such of our acts which are blundering, ill-
directed or inefficient (p. iii). The forms noted by Ball and others (Apple,
2004; Gee, 1999; Lipman, 2004) simply reflect a more recent permutation of
governmentality, whereby more powerful instruments of school governance
further skew power relations among students, teachers, and administrators.
The result is a reduction of teaching to the efficient delivery of instructional
content within the disciplining structure of public schooling in a sort of neo-
Taylorism.
The new managerialism noted by Ball is arguably a manifestation of the
relatively recent yet very widespread phenomenon of NPM (Hood, 1991).
NPM refers to a management ideology and an associated set of practices
emerging in the 1980s to contain the cost, improve public support, and en-
hance performance in public service provision (Dawson & Dargie, 2002).
NPM is rooted in a critique of a perceived bureau-pathology (Kaboolian,
1998, p. 190) in public administration, questions about the ability of public
administration to deliver public services efficiently and effectively, and a
concern with a power imbalance between public sector professionals and
their clients (S. P. Osborne & McLaughlin, 2002). Viewing the government
as bloated, inefficient, and unresponsive to client needs, proponents of NPM-
style reforms advocated a reinvention of public service provision along more
entrepreneurial lines (e.g., Hill, 1997; Hill, Pierce, & Guthrie, 1997). To
melt the fat we must change the incentives that drive our government (D.
Osborne & Gaebler, 1992, p. 23). Toward this end, NPM models seek to spur
innovative and entrepreneurial spirit by devolving authority over operational
decisions, reconfiguring accountability relations, promoting private sector
management techniques, increasing specification of and emphasis on targets,
and invoking competitive pressures in quasi-market environments (Hood,
1991; Pollitt, 2003). This approach to urban school reform is reflected in the
vision offered by Paul Hill (1997),
A public education system designed to meet the needs of the new urban econ-
omy will mix public accountability with school-level entrepreneurship. . . . Un-
der this vision of decentralization, each school would become a real organiza-
tion with its own staff, mission, approach to instruction, budget, and spending
authority. (pp. 499-500)
It is interesting that NPM juxtaposes competing and contradictory concep-

tual frameworks: the first, a neoTayloristic managerialism that supported
private sector practices, which included attempts to manage professionals,
introduce performance measures and incentive rewards systems; the sec-
ond, a public choice philosophy, emphasizing decentralization and compe-
tition that is at odds with the centralizing tendency of the other (Dawson &
Dargie, 2002, p. 38). The resulting fragmented centralization combining
top-down and bottom-up elements fostered a new institutional capacity, in-
creasing the power of institutional actors at the state, federal, and multina-
tional level at the expense of those at the local level (Fusarelli, 2002).
It is not surprising, given the substantial shift in power relations, that some
are highly skeptical about NPM approaches. Fusarelli and Johnson (2004)
argue that this form of neocorporatism may overplay the real and significant
difference between public and private sphere management. Rhodes (1994)
suggests that fashionable NPM-style reforms such as TSA are hollowing
out of the state as the scope and nature of public sector work are scaled back,
more heavily managed, and/or contracted out to private firms. Heavily
focused on economy, efficiency, and effectiveness, he warns, NPM reforms
erode accountability and governance capacity, leaving a more fragile, less
flexible, and less coordinated public sector susceptible to failure as pressures
to perform increase or shift. Pollitt (2003) describes NPM as a paradoxical
set of reform principles that, although demonstrating some level of success,
has achieved a level of rhetorical dominance that far outruns its impact on
practice (p. 26).
Given the prioritization of sigma-type values of efficiency and effec-
tiveness (see Table 1), Hood (1991) raises questions about the potential ero-
sion of fairness and honesty in public services and the resiliency and robust-
ness of public sector institutions. Examining the maturing movement, Hood
and Peters (2004) argue that NPM reforms were more normal than purported,
failing to incorporate evidence-based learning and failing to avoid one size
fits all models. The authors attribute the failure to live up to central tenets of
the reform approach to the ideological rather than pragmatic character of
much of the movement (p. 279) that contributed to its tendency toward man-
aged innovation rather than genuine organizational innovation. As discussed
below, many of these critiques are consistent with the findings reported in
Leaving Children Behind.
TABLE 1
Three Sets of Core Values in Public Management
Sigma-Type Values: Theta-Type Values: Lambda-Type Values:

Keep It Lean and Purposeful Keep It Honest and Fair Keep It Robust and Resilient
Standard of suc- frugality (matching of resources rectitude (achievement of fairness, resilience (achievement of reliability,
cess to tasks for given goals) mutuality, the proper discharge adaptivity, robustness)
of duties)
Standard of fail- waste (muddle, confusion, ineffi- malversation (unfairness, bias, abuse catastrophe (risk, breakdown,
ure ciency) of office) collapse)
Currency of suc- money and time (resource costs of trust and entitlements (consent, security and survival (confidence,
cess and fail- producers and consumers) legitimacy, due process, political life and limb)
ure entitlements)
Control emphasis output process input/output
Slack low medium high
Goals fixed/single incompatible double bind emergent/multiple
Information costed, segmented (commercial structured rich exchange, collective asset
assets)
Coupling tight medium loose
SOURCE: Adapted from Hood (1991, p. 11).
267
RECONSIDERING TEXAS-STYLE ACCOUNTABILITY

THROUGH NEW PUBLIC MANAGEMENT
Given the extent of the movement, it seems reasonable to suggest that the
influence of NPM on school management is of central concern to the field of
educational administration. What I want to do in the next couple of pages is to
glean some insights from Leaving Children Behind about the realized and
predictable effects of NPM on school management, school leadership, and
the public school project, generally. The discussion addresses three issues:
the promise of powerful new governance instruments to manage uncertainty
related to growing cultural and linguistic diversity, the seductiveness of these
tools that fit well-worn managerial ideologies, and the hidden costs of draw-
ing on private-sector models of entrepreneurial management to improve
public-sector performance.
New Instruments of Governance

to Manage Demographic Shifts
It will surprise no one remotely in touch with the broadcast media that the
United States has been undergoing substantial demographic shifts over the
past several decades. Between 1970 and 1999, the share of foreign-born resi-
dents from Europe declined from 62% to 16%, whereas the shares from Asia
and Latin America grew from 9% to 27% and 19% to 51%, respectively (U.S.
Census Bureau, 2003). Significant changes in the linguistic heritage of U.S.
schoolchildren are likewise occurring. A 2002 report commissioned by the
Office of English Language Acquisition, Language Enhancement and Aca-
demic Achievement for Limited English Proficient Students found that more
than 4.5 million students, nearly 10% of public school students in the United
States (pre-kindergarten to 12th grade), identified as limited English profi-
cient (LEP) in the 2000-2001 school year (Kindler, 2002). This figure
increased by almost 4% from the previous year. Since 1990-1991, the LEP
population is up approximately 105%, compared to a general school
population growth of 12%.
It would seem nave to suggest that the growth in language minority popu-
lations is unrelated to intensification of English-only movements around the
country over the past 25 years (or the past century and a half, for that matter).
By 1999, English as official language provisions had been adopted in 22
states. Eschewing arguments that linguistic pluralism enriches the country,
English-only proponents insist that national unity as well as economic
growth necessitates a common language. Common culture arguments appear
to coincide with and reinforce rationales related to economic and social effi-
ciencies realized through a common language of business. Mawhinney

(2005) argues that instruments of governance rooted in neoliberal logics
such as TSA promise technologies to realize this goal:
Ideologies of cultural homogeneity are veiled in education policy with lan-

guage of the potential of instruments of governance associated with various
models of controlling difference (assimilationist, multiculturalist) to foster
unity in diversity. (p. 15)
At the center of Leaving Children Behind is a polemic against the deployment

of performance-based accountability systems as disciplining technologies to
effectively eradicate the linguistic and cultural heritage of language minority
students. Proffered as tools to close achievement gaps stemming from the
soft bigotry of low expectations, according to the authors accounts, these
systems exacerbate differences in educational (and life) opportunities rooted
in longstanding structural inequality. The chapters by Sloan, Hampton, and
Amarillo et al. connect the increasingly narrow curriculum and impoverished
pedagogy offered to language minority and low-income students subjected
to neo-Tayloristic management characteristic of NPM, generally (Pollitt,
1990), and appearing in a particularly potent form in TSA. Corroborating
these findings, James Gee (1999) finds a hidden curriculum (Anyon, 1980)
still in place, but now carried out through more technically sophisticated
best practices and stoked by pressure from the testing regime.
Indeed, in this school, the teachers are hyper-aware that they and their school
will be judged by how well their students later do on the states third-grade ba-
sic reading test. So here we see quite sophisticated techniques being used to en-
force the old-style hidden curriculum, but in a way that will, in fact, produce
kids with better basic skills. (p. 6)
The pursuit of social justice seems to have been reduced to impelling ade-
quate levels of test performance from each child (Anderson, 2001; Black,
2005).
As noted above, advocates of NPM-style reform argue that decentraliza-
tion promotes entrepreneurialism, unleashing creativity and innovation.
Some might argue that the development and dissemination of these more
sophisticated techniques will at least improve the instruction available to tra-
ditionally underserved students. In practice, the fragmented centralization
of NPM appears to foster and perhaps exacerbate mimetic isomorphism
(DiMaggio & Powell, 1991), paradoxically contributing to the widespread
adoption of one-size-fits-all strategies that its proponents associate with cen-
tral bureaucracy (Hood & Peters, 2004). Hood (1991) argued much earlier
that the promotion of so-called sigma values (efficiency and effectiveness)

through NPM would occur at the expense of theta (fairness and equity) and
lambda (robustness and security) values in the organization. Furthermore, he
posited that as slack was reduced in the interest of efficiency, one of these val-
ued outcomes would likely give way more than the other. It is not surprising
that institutional actors might respond to protect the viability of the
organization at the expense of fairness and equity (Meyer & Rowan, 1977).
The adoption of codified best practices, such as the scripted reading pro-
grams and supplemental test prep curriculum as found in both the Texas and
California studies, reflects the sort of managed innovation associated with
NPM (Hood & Peters, 2004). But, best practices designed and legitimated in
one context may not fit in another. This is a likely outcome for language mi-
nority students for whom, as Ruiz de Velasco makes clear, assumptions of
homogeneity implicit in the adoption of prelegitimized and decontextualized
best practices do not hold. Thus, in those very places where genuine innova-
tion is needed to serve complex student needs, legitimacy and survival pres-
sures seem to contribute to dubious adoptions of prelegitimated scripts devel-
oped elsewhere, for others. Unfortunately, with institutional survival at stake,
educators may make strenuous efforts to fit students to the assumptions. Such
a consequence may be more likely if, as Sloan suggests, the deficit thinking
(Valencia, 1997) of teachers, generated as a result of the districts ratings fo-
cus, not only had no equivalent positive effects . . . but seemed to nurture old
stereotypes (p. 173). Noting a longstanding difficulty of the public school
system to disentangle educational practices that improve economic
productivity from those that reproduce social inequality, Gee (1999) notes,
Schools, as always, still engage a great deal in pedagogical practices meant

largely to produce quiescent students who have basic skills and can follow or-
ders. These pedagogies are often primarily directed at minority and poor stu-
dents, though today they are often the result of standards and testing regimes.
(p. 3)
Gee (1999) finds a broader range of students subject to these pedagogies as a

result of accountability pressures but notes that upper- and middle-class stu-
dents are more likely to evade these through private schools, schools of
choices (magnets), and high achievement pull-out programs such as gifted
and talented or advanced placement programs. The results are different
achievement trajectories. Working class students head toward more
dialogically oriented, material, and social worlds less inter-penetrated by
school-based and public sphere discourses (p. 6).1 The cultural and linguis-
tic knowledge acquired by language minority students through what Padilla
terms in his chapter convivencia is deemed an impediment to achievement

and allowed to decay or subtracted out in the English-only pedagogies noted
in the accounts offered by Sloan, Hampton, and Amarillo et al. In contrast,
middle-class students, enculturated as portfolio people diligently accumu-
lating and cataloging valuable achievements, prepare themselves to function
in, and glide in and out of, a variety of contexts and settings. Ironically, the
heritage language and cultural knowledge of language minority students of-
ten treated as impediments to English-language instruction and subject to
subtractive pedagogies (Valenzuela, 1999), are, as second languages, valu-
able commodities collected and catalogued in the portfolios of middle- and
upper-class students.
If cultural homogeneity is the end of instruments of governance like TSA,
where might portfolios replete with cultural and linguistic skills sets have
value? As Padilla suggests in Chapter 9, TSA should be understood as an in-
strument of a culture of measurement, a culture with universalist and
objectivist pretensions, a culture spread through imperialistic management
discourses (Ball, 1990b). As discussed above, the transnational spread of
NPM logics and practices in developed and developing nations in North
America, Europe, the United Kingdom, and the Pacific Rim reflects the
emergence of a new globalised political economy of education (Luke,
2002, p. 2). Noting that our world has become smaller, at times frighteningly
so, he posits,
We have learned . . . the physical, psychic and spiritual search for normative
versions of the good life remain [sic] for some not only worth dying for, but
apparently worth risking ones life and family, and, in cases, killing and inflict-
ing violence for. As frightening and unsettling as these signs should be, they sit
on a balance beam against the uncontested domination of the human capital
rationale. (p. 2)
Although an unsurprising response in a country feeling more vulnerable to

terrorism and to economic decline, he cautions against being backed into an
undernuanced and empirically misleading model that bifurcates us into pro
and anti-globalisation politics (p. 2).2
Also cautioning against an overly dark and narrow reading of globaliza-
tion, Mawhinney (2005) points to the promise of potentially new understand-
ings of human agency represented in and realized through transnational
communities . . . formed through the cross-border activities that . . . link indi-
viduals, families and local groups (p. 16). In this view, schools serving lan-
guage minority students are not triage areas for a potential underclass but
sites of knowledge and cultural production. These students arrive at school
with substantial funds of knowledge (Moll, Armanti, Neff, & Gonzalez,

1992) related to heritage cultures and languages developed through
convivencia in their respective communities (see also Jimenez, 2000).
Although not measured and thus devalued in single-indicator systems such
as TSA, this knowledge, which allows crossing of cultural and linguistic bor-
ders, is clearly valued within the immediate and wider community and in the
marketplace.
In sum, when making policy and preparing school leaders to better serve
an increasingly diverse society, we ought to think very carefully about the
promise of control offered by the instruments of governance making up TSA.
Contrary to this promise, Leaving Children Behind suggests that social insta-
bility and fragmentation may result as differences in achievement trajectories
among student groups are exacerbated. Enforced linguistic and cultural
homogeneity subtracts or allows the decay of language facility and cultural
capital that may ultimately serve language minority students well. As
enacted in TSA, efficiency pressures of NPM-style reform appear to hasten
the erosion of heritage languages and associated cultural capital by encour-
aging English-only instruction and to retard achievement growth by promot-
ing curricular narrowing and instructional impoverishment. Given these
issues, it seems advisable to interrogate the attractiveness of the associated
instruments to those charged with administering schools in more efficient
and effective ways.
Management Ideologies and Leadership Preparation

Focused primarily on policies, students, and teachers, administrators are
not the central figures in Leaving Children Behind. Given the prominence
often ascribed to administrators in school reform (Leithwood, Steinbach, &
Jantzi, 2002), their roles appear somewhat underwritten. But, although
administrators are not central to the accounts, old, new, and recycled admin-
istrative ideologies figure prominently.
In contrast to a rhetoric of evidence-based decision making, Hood and
Peters (2004) argue that NPM is often characterized by selective use of evi-
dence. This rhetoric-reality gap figures prominently in the Valencia and
Villarreal and Amarillo et al. accounts in which political expedience rather
than clear and convincing evidence appears to hold sway. McNeils interro-
gation of the evidence of the Texas miracle (Haney, 2000) does little to mit-
igate the cynicism about the motives of those controlling the policy levers or
managing the public front of the system. Arguably, however, ideology offers
a better account than cynicism of the seemingly shameless promotion of a
dubious miracle. Similarly, an ideological commitment might account for

the apparently willful dismissal of evidence that might undermine the case
for Texass social promotion policy or Californias use of the English-only
SAT 9 for school ratings.
As Leithwood and colleagues (2002) suggest, the confidence in TSA and
parallel models belies a lack of evidence concerning efficacy:
The prevailing dominance of accountability on the agenda of educational re-

formers might cause one to assume that quite a lot is known about the actual ef-
fects of increasing school accountability . . . although empirical evidence about
the relative effects of some accountability tools has grown in the past few
years . . . in reference to the broad array of such tools currently in use, our
knowledge is quite limited. (p. 95)
NPM rhetoric notwithstanding, we should not be surprised that decision

makers are paradigmatically bound (Allison, 1969; Kuhn, 1970)3 and that the
rhetoric of accountability effects has far outpaced an actual knowledge base.
Still, because all ideologies have structural implications, but some have
more than others (Littler, 1978, p. 187), we should be mindful of the conse-
quences of this ideological bent for school management and leadership prep-
aration. Littlers quote refers specifically to the lasting effect of Taylorism in
restructuring of the organization of work to clearly delineate line from staff.
Of particular interest in a discussion of school leadership, the new organiza-
tional form also promoted a division of management through which lower
level managers were de-skilled and disempowered. The lasting effect of in-
terference with social integration among and between line and staff workers,
if not Taylors conscious intent, was organizational norms of minimum inter-
action undermining employee control of the work (Littler, 1978). Certainly,
norms of isolation and noninterference remain in schools (Fullan, 1995;
Lortie, 1975), even if the sort of tight coupling Taylor envisioned did not.
The Tayloristic roots of educational administration are well documented
(Callahan, 1962; Cronin, 1973; Katz, 1971; Tyack, 1974). A number of
scholars suggest that these scripts continue to inform administrative practice
(English, 2003; Foster, 1986; Ogawa & Bossert, 1995; Scheurich, 1995). As
noted by Gewirtz and Ball (2000) and others (Bottery, 2003; Eriksen, 2001;
Fusarelli, 2002; Moos, 2003; Pollitt, 1990; Power, Halpin, & Whitty, 1997),
the logics of new managerialism promoted by NPM-style reforms recall and
reinforce the administrative scripts promoted by Taylor. Given new assess-
ment and information technologies that penetrate the classroom door, neo-
Tayloristic administrators are much better equipped to monitor and manage
performance than their predecessors.
Thus, we should not be surprised to find that administrators and teachers

hold different views of TSA identified in the Sloan, Hampton, and Amarillo
et al. chapters. The roles designed, technologies conferred, and stakes
attached differ substantially for the two groups. Regardless of the rhetoric of
flattened hierarchies and decentralization, the lines of authority in TSA are
clear. The principalship becomes the focus of intense pressures. Just as the
intensification of the ratings focus might nurture old stereotypes about lan-
guage minority students held by teachers, as Sloan surmises, so might the
pressures foster deficit thinking by administrators with regard to those who
work beneath them. Given the ideological rather than pragmatic bent in
NPM (Hood & Peters, 2004), we need to carefully interrogate accounts that
valorize the role of administrators and the systems of proactive redundancy
(Skrla et al., 2000) enacted to reclaim students overlooked or underserved by
classroom teachers.
In a number of cases, the contributors to Leaving Children Behind note
teachers struggling to better serve their students, stymied or frustrated by the
administrative responses to the accountability system. As Reitzug and
Capper (1996) remind us, administrators may also operate from an ethical
commitment to social justice that obligates them to act unilaterally vis--vis
teachers in the interest of children. It also seems reasonable to suggest that
either group may serve its own interests at the expense of children at times.
The suggestion that either group is nobler or more selfless than the other
seems unlikely. But, given differences between administrator and teacher
career structures, the key roles of the principalship and the superintendency
have been a particular focus of pay and incentive restructuring within the
entrepreneurial logics of NPM-style reforms such as TSA (see McNeils
chapter). We must be concerned about pressures being brought to bear on
administrators that promote cutting corners rather than closing achievement
gaps and focusing on public relations more than on the public good (Bohte &
Meier, 2000). At a minimum, we should be concerned that the new pressures
may isolate school administrators from their colleagues and hinder
conversations about the ends and means of schools (Power et al., 1997).
The accounts of blueprints for school improvement and the adoption of
scripted reading programs suggest that NPM reforms such as TSA have
effectively revived Taylors program of job decomposition and division of
management. Arguably, neo-Taylorism has tapped into management ideolo-
gies that remain in the deep structures of schooling. Problematically, these
are ideologies that administrator training programs trade on, fail to trouble,
and often reinforce. As McNeils chapter makes clear, we must subject
miraculous claims to careful scrutiny. This is especially true when the
accounts draw on and reinforce well-entrenched Tayloristic ideologies and,
as Sloan notes, when the accounts offered by district officials distant from the
classroom appear tenuously linked to classroom practice.
It is important to understand the new accountability (Fuhrman, 1999)
emerging in the 1990s and reflected in TSA as a manifestation of a broader
challenge to the provision of public sector services. This management-
oriented challenge often appears a matter of ideology as much as actual per-
formance (Hood & Peters, 2004; Pollitt, 2003). Much of this critique on the
public-sector valorizes private-sector management technique spurred by
market competition. In the final section, I discuss the potential costs of
recasting school leadership within entrepreneurial forms.
Preparing School Leaders as Public Servants or Entrepreneurs

In the final chapter, Valenzuela expresses concern that traditionally
underserved communities are losing faith in public education and beginning
to entertain alternatives offered by privatization. NPM-type reforms were
promoted as means to improve public support by enhancing the provision of
public services like education and by containing costs (Dawson & Dargie,
2002). As noted earlier, NPM does so by promoting efficiency and purpose-
fulness (sigma values) at the expense of valued outcomes of resilience and
robustness (theta values) or honesty and fairness (lambda values) (Hood,
1991). Given the apparent fracturing of public support for the public school
project in Texas, we might ask about the costs of reestablishing public sup-
port through the creation of quasi-markets and emphasis on performance
management.
With loose coupling, multiple and emergent goals, and high levels of slack
in the organization (Weick, 1976), schools have proven particularly robust
and resilient organizations. At the same time, the level of slack leaves the
institution vulnerable to charges of inefficiency, mission creep, and uncon-
trolled expansion. The viability of the institution can be undermined if the
public, perceiving it to be more concerned with its own survival than with the
public good, withdraws its support. As the field of educational administra-
tion was largely founded in a campaign to save schools from the graft and
waste of corrupt ward politics (Callahan, 1962; Tyack, 1974), administrators
are understandably sensitive to these charges. At the same time, public edu-
cations legitimacy depends on an achievement ideology (Habermas, 1975)
rooted in a belief that social mobility through educational accomplishment
substantially enhances life opportunities and mitigates social inequalities
typically exacerbated by market forces. Tyack and Cuban (1995) note that
although the public has largely supported public education based on these
terms, Americans from all walks of life may have shared a common faith in
individual and societal progress through education, but they hardly shared
equally in its benefits (p. 22). Thus, as with concerns of inefficiency and
underperformance, the viability of public education is vulnerable to claims
of unfairness, especially when these appear to reinforce rather than redress
embedded social inequality.
Hood (1991) argues that NPM cannot simultaneously promote all three
core values of public management and will inevitably privilege sigma values.
TSA appears to promise all three, resulting in an educational system that is
more effective, more fair, and having regained public trust, more robust.
These promises are founded on a belief that the schools will respond appro-
priately to leaning out the system as attention shifts to improving specific
outputs while inputs are held constant or reduced. School managers are
expected to respond to the withdrawal of slack in the system by narrowing the
scope of activity, refining processes, and replacing loose couplings with tight
couplings. As Ruiz de Velasco reminds us in the second chapter, predicting
the nature of the black box responses is a dangerous business when assump-
tions about the instructional needs of the entering children and the instructional
capacity of the schools they enter do not hold. Although NPM promises much,
in the absence of close scrutiny, it seems likely that values of robustness and
resilience might be pitted against those of fairness and honesty.
According to some, the deployment of NPM logics has in fact fostered a
de-skilling and reskilling of school administrators as performance managers
concerned with ensuring results by standardizing and normalizing educa-
tional work (Ball, 1993, 2003; OSullivan, 2005; Power et al., 1997). Power
and colleagues suggest that the NPM response to the legitimation crisis has in
many cases been increasing estrangement of administrators as the managers
from their teaching colleagues as the managed. Ball notes that within the
management-oriented environment associated with the NPM emphasis on
decentralization and interorganizational competition, the critique of organi-
zational processes from within is effectively suppressed as potentially endan-
gering the institution. The result is greater opacity of organizational pro-
cesses as well as intensified feelings among educators of self-estrangement
from work. Neither trend, each figuring prominently in Leaving Children
Behind, is likely to serve public education or its clients well.
Studying teacher responses to accountability policies, Leithwood et al.
(2002) found that control strategies trained on input, process, and outputs in-
tended to regulate and standardize school practices tended to be overrated by
reformers. In contrast, commitment strategies aimed at unleashing teacher
energy and expertise appeared particularly productive in the new
accountability contexts.
Most of what we know about building commitment to change tells us that feel-
ings of enthusiasm and satisfaction are an important part of what sustains peo-
ple under conditions of risk and uncertainty. (p. 115)
Leithwood et al. (2002) raise an important consideration with regard to the

sustained and biting attack on public school administration, noting that
virtually all relevant evidence portrays a level of commitment to their clients

by teachers that other organizations can only dream of with their employees.
Reform-minded governments would do well to consider what is to be lost by
squandering such a resource through the heavy handed use of control strategies
and what the costs would be of finding an equally effective replacement. (p. 115)
The accounts in Leaving Children Behind suggest that a concern with the ero-
sion of teacher commitment under performance management pressures is
well placed given the importance of public trust in schools. Following the in-
tensification of control strategies associated with the Twin Oaks blueprint for
success, Sloan finds a shift in tenor as educators begin to identify low-income
and language-minority students as impediments to improved school perfor-
mance as measured by testing outputs. Hampton and Amarillo et al. find
teachers more ambivalent about their work and alienated from students and
administrators. Similarly, Valenzuela finds the connection between the pub-
lic and the public education system cracking, expressed in the hisses and
boos from parents as school officials attempted to relocate the blame for low
achievement to the home.
As slack is withdrawn from the system and demands for performance
increase, managers face pressure to find quick fixes to reestablish legitimacy.
Rather than seeking to renegotiate practices at the school and classroom level
with parents and students, schools may attempt to regain their footing by
adopting prelegitimated command and control strategies. This sort of man-
aged innovation is both predictable and well documented (DiMaggio &
Powell, 1991; Meyer & Rowan, 1991; Ogawa & Bossert, 1995). Arguably,
the institution of quasi-markets has made public schools more responsive to
private-sector vendors rather than to the public. Schools represent tremen-
dously attractive buyers, as textbook publishers have long known. As the
accounts by Amarillo et al. and by Sloan make clear, TSA systems help put a
premium on high-dollar instructional packages that provide legitimacy, if not
results. Ironically, as Foster (1980) noted, schools often gain little from this
sort of managed innovation whose failure to provide a meaningful educa-
tion may threaten the legitimacy not of the academics who develop them but
of teachers who are forced to use them (p. 501). Thus, the adoption of
decontextualized scripted reading programs as noted by Sloan and by
Amarillo et al., programs that neither fit nor provide for nuanced adjustments
needed to serve language minority students (or any students) with atypical
learning needs, appears to be a questionable bargain.
As Ogawa and Bossert (1995) remind us, educational organizations are
adept at managing public pressure to sustain legitimacy. This is illustrated in
the Flores and Clark chapter suggesting that preparation programs are sensi-
tive to the quasi-market pressures, but those responses may run counter to the
needs of the public these institutions are intended to serve. The recent
account of administrator preparation by OSullivan (2005) suggests that
NPM-style reforms in England and Wales have had a substantial effect on the
types of training demanded from, the governance and funding of, and the
academic independence allowed those institutions traditionally charged with
preparing administrators and studying administration. It appears that admin-
istrative practice and leadership preparation is impoverished, to the degree
that the role of critique loses ground to demands for management training.
NPM principles have and will likely continue to have substantial influ-
ence on the training and education of school leaders, policy analysts, and
scholars. As the school administrator is recast as entrepreneur and his or her
performance judged in narrow terms, his or her role as public servant and
leader is diminished (Terry, 1998). Much is lost if the public trust is under-
mined by a perception that the education establishment appears to work for
private-industry hucksters rather than children or taxpayers, or seems more
concerned with its public front than with the services it provides. These are
not inevitable outcomes of NPM-style reform, but they follow from the
logics of TSA and the accounts in Leaving Children Behind offer evidence
that they occur and are highly problematic. As the field of educational adminis-
tration grapples with questions about the effectiveness of its leadership prepa-
ration programs (Levine, 2005; The Fordham Foundation, 2003), we must
respond to the critiques and be responsible to the broader public we serve
(Young, Crow, Orr, Ogawa, & Creighton, 2005). Part of this responsibility
lies in interrogating the logics to which leadership preparation (and public
education establishment, generally) is being made responsive, not to reject
the critiques out of hand but to thoughtfully participate with the public in
(re)shaping our mission and specifying the multiple criteria by which our
public contribution will be judged.
CONCLUSION
As stated in the introduction, Leaving Children Behind will likely spark a

good deal of discussion among those who read it. Some will be dissuaded by
the title and thus the authors may at times be preaching to the choir. This is
unfortunate, because there is much that proponents of TSA can glean from a
close reading. To be certain, there are a number of points where more
nuanced language might better engage a skeptical audience and times when
proponents of TSA are portrayed in unnecessarily cynical terms. That said,
the tenor of the book seems understandable in light of the problematic but
predictable effects of TSA detailed by these researchers. The accounts
offered are largely consistent with my own findings (Maxcy, 2004) and those
of colleagues examining school-level responses to TSA (Black, 2005).
Reports of ethical lapses in the print and broadcast media underscore the
pressures invoked by high-stakes systems.4
To be certain, we should not romanticize the good old days before high-
stakes testing. I am quite confident the contributors to this volume do not. The
contributors are among those who have contributed substantively to the cri-
tique of schools for failing to equitably and effectively serve the historically
underserved in our communities and now seek a renewed and expanded com-
mitment to the public school, not a maintenance of the status quo (e.g.,
McNeil, 1982, 2000; Valencia, 1997, 2000; Valenzuela, 1999). As these
authors correctly argue, holding schools accountable for eliminating
achievement gaps on high-stakes testing without first redressing longstand-
ing structural inequality is a recipe for finger pointing, the exacerbation of
deficit thinking, and ultimately a fracturing of the public commitment to pub-
lic schools. However bloated, inefficient, and unresponsive public education
has been and may be, simply leaning out the institution through cost-cutting
and invocation of performance management is unlikely to contribute to
greater equity in the system.
Leaving Children Behind is a dark account of the state of education for
ELL students subjected to powerful performance-based accountability sys-
tems represented by TSA. Moreover, the fracturing of public commitment to
Texas public education reported in the closing chapter poses very troubling
issues for the so-called education establishment. Although some (Skrla et al.,
2001) point to the potential of TSA as an instrument of social justice, the
accounts here raise serious questions about the rationale for such systems and
suggest particularly pernicious effects on our most vulnerable students and
on an increasingly vulnerable public institution. Considering the stakes for
the students and for the increasingly compromised public trust on which the
public school project depends, the demands for reciprocal, upward account-
ability from the contributors to Leaving Children Behind cannot and should
not be understated.
NOTES
1. See the critical ethnographies by Willis (1981) and Foley (1990) for theorization of these
processes of cultural production.
2. Whereas Lukes us is more expansive, the caution expressed is particularly relevant for
Americans in the wake of the World Trade Center bombing, the recent recession and weak recov-
ery, and concerns that multinational corporations can move wider segments of our job base off-
shore.
3. A reader might correctly argue that the accounting of Texas-style accountability by the au-
thors of Leaving Children Behind and this review are simply differently ideologically informed.
The concern is that the ideological nature of New Public Management is both unacknowledged
and contrary to its billing as evidence-based and objective.
4. Most notorious is the cheating scandal implicating district administrators in the Austin In-
dependent School District in 1999 and more recent allegations of deliberate underreporting of
dropouts in the Houston Independent School District.
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Leaving Children Behind: How Texas-Style Accountability Fails Latino

Background: Leaving Children Behind: How Texas-Style Accountability Fails Latino

Keywords: performance accountability; New Public Management; school leadership

Truth in advertising, although admirable, may not always be an advisable

Texas-Style Accountability Fails Latino Youth makes no attempt to be fair

OVERVIEW OF THE CHAPTERS

After a brief review of scholarship and activism concerning Texas educa-

Accountability must not be equated with the high-stakes testing of students,

Moving from projections to consequences, the next three chapters look at

As a group, the contributors to Leaving Children Behind examine the

THE ELEMENTS OF TEXAS-STYLE

Texas-style accountability emerged in a period when educational admin-

Managerial Reform in Public Schooling

Bottery, 2003; OSullivan, 2005), Denmark (Moos, 2003), Australia (Bates,

The installation of the new culture of competitive performativity involves the

This new managerialism transforms the culture of schools through systems

the potential for inauthenticity and meaninglessness is increasingly an every-

Like Ball, Mike Bottery (2003) suggests a low-trust environment generated

The Art of Governance and the New Public Management

To theorize the microphysics of domination reflected in these manage-

It is interesting that NPM juxtaposes competing and contradictory concep-

Sigma-Type Values: Theta-Type Values: Lambda-Type Values:

RECONSIDERING TEXAS-STYLE ACCOUNTABILITY

New Instruments of Governance

ciencies realized through a common language of business. Mawhinney

Ideologies of cultural homogeneity are veiled in education policy with lan-

At the center of Leaving Children Behind is a polemic against the deployment

that the promotion of so-called sigma values (efficiency and effectiveness)

Schools, as always, still engage a great deal in pedagogical practices meant

Gee (1999) finds a broader range of students subject to these pedagogies as a

terms in his chapter convivencia is deemed an impediment to achievement

Although an unsurprising response in a country feeling more vulnerable to

with substantial funds of knowledge (Moll, Armanti, Neff, & Gonzalez,

Management Ideologies and Leadership Preparation

dubious miracle. Similarly, an ideological commitment might account for

The prevailing dominance of accountability on the agenda of educational re-

NPM rhetoric notwithstanding, we should not be surprised that decision

Thus, we should not be surprised to find that administrators and teachers

Preparing School Leaders as Public Servants or Entrepreneurs

Leithwood et al. (2002) raise an important consideration with regard to the

virtually all relevant evidence portrays a level of commitment to their clients

As stated in the introduction, Leaving Children Behind will likely spark a

Bush, G. W. (2001). No child left behind. Washington, DC: Department of Education.

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