#9 October 2002 ISSN 1715-0094 Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor © 2002 S. Mathison & E. W. Ross Mathison, S. & Ross, E. W. (2002). The hegemony of accountability in schools and universities. Workplace, 9, 88-102. SANDRA MATHISON AND E. WAYNE ROSS The Hegemony of Accountability in Schools and Universities Since “A Nation at Risk” was published in the early 1980s, the emphasis in K-12 school reform has been the development of a world-class school system that can be directly linked to increased international economic production and prominence. In other words, corporate interests that have been continually promulgated by the business community have driven school reform efforts. There are many contexts in which this special interest is manifest although one of the most prominent has been the four National Education Summits, controlled and dominated by corporate CEO’s and governors. Simultaneously, higher education institutions have also become corporatized through, for example, joint ventures with profit making businesses, the creation of research parks, increased corporate and political control (often through their foundations) over research, use of temporary and contingent labor, and university administrators as paid corporate board members. In this environment of corporate takeover of schools and universities many recommended interventions are promoted. In K-12 schools some examples are school choice plans (voucher systems, charter schools), comprehensive school designs based on business principles (such as economies of scale, standardization, cost efficiency, production line strategies), back to basics curricula, teacher merit pay, and strong systems of accountability. In universities some examples are the demand for common general education and core curricula (often not developed or supported by faculty), demands for common tests of student core knowledge, standardized tests of knowledge and skill for professional areas, promotion of “classic" education, and elimination of “new” content areas such as women’s studies, post-modernism, and multiculturalism. In this paper we will look specifically at the increased and increasing emphasis on accountability in schools and universities. Accountability has become the means of enforcement and control used by states and businesses. This is so since those who declare that schools and universities ought to be a certain way cannot themselves make schools and universities be that way. States and corporations can only demand that others remake schools and authority to carry out this mission is delegated, although not the authority to decide on the mission. The delegation takes the form of uniform outcome measures of productivity, e.g., scores on standardized tests or percentage of job placements, which provide evidence that the authority delegated to teachers or professors is being properly exercised. We will explore this hegemony of accountability, its origins, meanings, and consequences as it has developed in K-12 education and is spreading to higher education. We will conclude with two examples of counter-hegemonic accountability strategies.