Subject Matters:
How Accountability Impacts High School Math and English Departments
Dana Holland, Betheny Gross, and Joy Anderson
Consortium for Policy Research in Education
University of Pennsylvania
A paper prepared for the
Annual Conference of the American Association of Educational Research
Montreal, Canada
April 2005
I. Research Focus
High schools are increasingly coming into focus as the objects of federal and state
accountability systems. At the recently concluded National Governors’ Association
summit, both business and political leaders advocated for restructuring and sustained
change for high schools, putting an end to the “culture of educational complacency” as
one governor put it (Olson 2005). However, the differentiated organization of high
schools presents special challenges to standards-based accountability, which assumes that
the school is the unit of improvement (Fuhrman 1999). High schools are large and
complex, and whereas teachers in comparatively homogeneous lower grades might see
the school as their primary reference group, high school teachers tend to regard
themselves foremost as members of subject matter departments (Johnson 1990). These
“invisible structures,” as Siskin (1994) has called departments, create strong
organizational boundaries within high schools, influencing the professional identity and
capacity for action of the teachers within these boundaries.
This study examines the overall and differential impact of standards-based
accountability on the goals and experiences of teachers in high school math and English
departments, subjects drawing the most attention in accountability systems. One of the
hallmarks of the new accountability is an exchange of flexibility for results—policy
makers determine targets, while teachers, schools, and districts are left to determine the
response. The study focuses on how departmental structure figures into high school
responses to accountability in different state contexts. It does not link variation in
departmental responses to changes in student achievement; it is instead an exploratory
investigation of both how departmental structure influences response to accountability
Subject Matters, p 1
and how accountability seems to be influencing departmental structure. In considering
how policy interacts with the organizational structure in high schools, we assume that
organizational differentiation within high schools and the nature of accountability has the
potential to impact teachers in the same school differently. Explanations for these
differential responses are therefore argued here to follow from the interactions among the
specific characters of departments, the designs of state accountability systems, and more
or less inherent features of different subject matters.
This work is part of a larger multi-year study of high schools being conducted by
the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE), with funding provided by the
Institute for Educational Sciences. This larger study investigates strategies for
instructional improvement in American high schools, examining how below-average
performing high schools incorporate their states’ accountability goals into their own,
identify their challenges, search for improvement strategies, and generally respond to the
gap between their current levels of achievement and external expectations.
II. Relevant Theoretical and Empirical Research
Importance of Departments in High Schools
The “egg crate” model of high schools as places where privacy norms of
professional practice prevail (Lortie 1975; Jackson 1968), has been tempered with
scholarship showing the mediating influence of departments on teachers’ work and the
social organization of the high school (Bidwell and Yasumoto 1999; Johnson 1990; Little
2002; Siskin 1994; McLaughlin and Talbert 2001; Rowan 1990). Although departments
show considerable variation in their roles, level of cohesion and responsibility, research
has consistently shown that teachers tend to identify their subject-based colleagues as
their core professional group with whom they share knowledge, goals, and experiences.
Siskin (1994) found departments in one California high school to “comprise different
worlds, exhibiting different cultures, and controlling key decisions about resources,
professional tasks, and careers.” Although the “collegial focus” of departmental social
organization has been found to provide structural and normative capacity for collegial
control of instruction (Bidwell and Yasumoto 1999), it is unclear how accountability
systems, which impose various levels and kinds of control on curriculum and therefore on
instruction, affect collegial curricular activities.
Subject Matters, p 2
Typologies of High School Departments
Typologies have been developed to characterize departments by the key
dimensions influencing their efficacy as organizational units.1 McLaughlin and Talbert
(2001, 62) differentiate between strong and weak departments, defining weak
departments as typified by individuated values and beliefs, in contrast to strong
departments in which goals and beliefs are held in common. In weak departments,
traditional practice predominates, and any innovation that happens occurs in isolation.
Strong departments can support either traditional community that enforces socialization
to traditional practice, or communities of practice, where organizational learning and
collaboration is built into the group’s ethos. In this scheme, strong high school
departments can be reactionary or reformist, with capacity to mobilize for resistance or
for change in core practices.
Siskin (1994, 100) identifies two key dimensions of departments, inclusivity,
which indicates how encompassing is the collectivity, and commitment, which indicates
how widely goals and purposes are shared. These two dimensions inform a four-part
classification:
Bundled
Bonded
Low Commitment
High Commitment
High Inclusion
High Inclusion
Fragmented
Split
Low Commitment
High Commitment
Low Inclusion
Low Inclusion
Bonded departments, which are akin to McLaughlin and Talbert’s professional learning
community, are indicated by regular collaboration among department members with
efforts communally directed toward reaching departmental goals. In Siskin’s (1994)
study of three high schools in two states, California and Michigan, conducted in the early
1990s, bonded departments were rare. Bundled departments, where teachers are part of a
cohesive community but hold individual goals and work generally in isolation, were
much more commonly represented in Siskin’s sample. In bundled departments, teachers
Subject Matters, p 3
identify with the group and coordinate when necessary, but privacy norms militate
against formal collaboration in curriculum and instruction. In fragmented conditions
departments are organized units in name only, where teachers work in isolation, goals are
atomized, and individuals are largely left to identify and solve their own problems. Split
departments exhibit breaches of one sort or another, with factions of teachers aligned
along the lines of age, seniority, race, gender, or some other identity characteristic.
Despite their rarity, strong learning communities, which Siskin would call bonded
departments, are lauded by McLaughlin and Talbert as being most beneficial to students.
They contend that communities of practice minimize the “instructional lottery” for
students, in which classroom experiences are determined by the individual proclivities of
the teacher to whom a student happens to be assigned, rather than by the concerted effort
of a unified, improvement-oriented collective. Notably, scholars in the field of
organizational learning have found that communities of practice are associated with
innovation in the workplace (Brown and Duguid 1991), confirming McLaughlin and
Talbert’s argument that this normative type is associated with capacity to improve.
The Consequences of Subject Matter on Departments
The focus on departments has been important in redressing tendencies to view the
high school as a homogeneous unit akin to elementary schools. However, some argue
that departments themselves can be substantively differentiated. While acknowledging
the influence of “subject perspectives,” Ball and Lacey (1980) argue against a model of
departments that constitute undifferentiated knowledge sub-cultures. In a study of four
secondary schools in Britain they found that English departments supported multiple
subject paradigms within one department. Subjects, this work implies, support some
degree of internal flexibility. But what consequences does this have for curricular
activities, and are all high school subjects similar disposed to internal diversity?
Stodolsky and Grossman (1995) take up these issues in an investigation of how
teachers’ perceptions of the qualities of five different subjects create conceptual contexts
for teachers that vary from field to field. In turn, they then examine how key features of
these subjects affect curricular coordination and control. They identify five features of
It should be noted that although McLaughlin and Talbert’s (2001) and Siskin’s (1994) work is distinct, the
empirical material they work with both draw from the same study conducted in Michigan and California in
the early 1990’s.
1
Subject Matters, p 4
subject matter: definition (how clear are the boundaries of a field); scope (the extent a
school subject is homogenous or a composite of different fields); sequence (how much
prior learning is perceived as prerequisite to later learning); dynamism (how static or
dynamic is the subject); and elective or required status of the subject. Based on survey
data collected from teachers in 16 schools in Michigan and California in the early 1990s,2
they found, as expected, that math and foreign language teachers see their subjects as
significantly more defined, more sequential, and less dynamic than did teachers in
English, science or social studies. They also found that the qualities that teachers
associate with their subjects have consequences for how they approach their curriculum.
While almost all teachers claimed near total control over instruction, the relatively more
sequential subjects, most notably math and foreign language, produced greater curricular
and content coordination among teachers. Less well-defined subjects, namely English,
science, social studies, prompted less consensus among teachers in those areas. Press for
coverage (perceived pressure to cover a defined scope and sequence of curriculum) was
similarly highest for math and foreign language, and lowest for science and social
studies, with English in the middle. This research suggests that features of math and
English as subjects have opposite kinds of consequences for the social organization of the
high school department.
The Policy Environment
Research on high school departments usefully highlights the specific
organizational conditions in which teachers work. Research on subject matter indicates
how content too can introduce curricular constraints and organizational conditions. The
policy environment introduces yet another factor that intersects with organizational
structure and subject matter conditions to influence teaching and learning in high schools.
While the policy context is regularly considered in studies of high school departments,
the passage of No Child Left Behind, with its heightened emphasis on state-wide
standardized testing and uniform high standards, ushered in a novel task for high schools:
preparing all students to achieve at a minimum standard (Siskin 2003).
2
This study also draws from the same empirical base as McLaughlin and Talbert (2001) and Siskin (1994).
As impressive as the cumulative effect of this scholarship has been for understanding the role of high
school departments, their reliance on the same data set and therefore same state policy contexts is a
limitation of this literature.
Subject Matters, p 5
The link between high school departments and present-day accountability
contexts has not been fully examined. Previous research suggests how the current push
for standards and standardized testing is likely to impact departments as organizational
units housing subject matter specialists. Referencing their research as anchored in the
standards-setting movement of the 1980s, Archbald and Porter (1994) compared high
school teachers’ control over curriculum in two subjects, math and social studies. They
found that external tests and curriculum guidelines were viewed as more influential by
math than social studies teachers. However, the two groups of teachers did not differ in
their perceptions of control over content and pedagogy. Despite stiffer external controls,
math teachers’ sense of control over pedagogy (instruction, homework, and student
achievement standards) was in fact higher than that of social studies teachers. This
suggests the possibility of a department effect, propagating belief in the consonance
between district level curricular control and the goals and efforts of department members.
Siskin (2003) in a study of high schools and accountability in four states found that high
schools in states with weak or moderate accountability showed “dramatic differences”
among the schools’ accountability responses in comparison to schools in states where
sanctions are stronger and systems have been in place longer. She observed some
instances of teacher engagement in substantive and sustained conversation about teaching
to the new standards. However, this happened in departments, and very few departments
in her sample were organized to prompt or sustain these conversations.
Some researchers argue that policy design should take both departments and
subject matter in high schools more seriously, building mechanisms into the
accountability system to encourage professional interaction. Based on data collected in
the early 1990s, McLaughlin and Talbert (2001) conjecture that it was no accident that
the strong communities of practice found among the schools in their sample were located
in California, where “new standards for teaching and learning were embodied in core
subject frameworks, and where teacher professional development initiatives and subjectarea networks were growing.” Siskin (1994) predicts that without overt efforts to change
curriculum and instruction, “subject-by-subject,” that is within departments, that the
impact of standards-based accountability on student achievement in high schools will be
negligible.
Subject Matters, p 6
III. Hypotheses and Expectations Based on Previous Research
1) Research on departments suggests that bonded departments, or strong communities of
practice, would be most likely to mount a coordinated response to accountability,
especially if the goals of accountability have been fully incorporated into the
department’s own. Given their strong sense of identity, these departments would likely
also hold other goals, and members would likely not present themselves as fully captured
by accountability demands. In so far as the accountability system makes the district or
school principal into an agent in the implementation of accountability prescriptions, we
would expect them to be more of a presence in departmental matters regardless of
departmental type.
2) Research on departments suggests the possibility of differential responses to
accountability among departments in the same school. Following from argument that
departments themselves can be differentiated identity units, we also hypothesize the
possibility of differential responses within departments. We expect that the specific
design attributes of accountability systems might have different effects on teachers
depending on whether or not they are working with courses, grade levels, or students
targeted by the accountability system.
3) Research on the relation of subject matter to curricular activities leads us to predict
substantial differences between math and English regardless of accountability context.
The relatively more defined, sequential, and static features of math as a subject contrast
with English. Because of these subject matter features, math teachers exhibit more
consensus and coordination around curriculum and more coordination in curricular
activities than English teachers. However, in so far as accountability system design and
pressure recasts English as focused primarily on language and communication skills, then
we expect that English as a subject might take on some of the features that Stodolsky and
Grossman (1995) identify for foreign language, which are comparable with math. Where
math and English teachers appear to be responding similarly to accountability, it might
not be that there is a school level response in operation, but instead that English as a
subject has become and been accepted as being more “math-like.”
Subject Matters, p 7
IV. Methodology
The larger study from which this paper draws is based on a nested sample of 48
schools in 36 districts in six states, selected to include two weak accountability states
(Pennsylvania and Michigan) and four strong accountability states (North Carolina,
Florida, New York, and California). Using discussions of the strength of state
accountability systems conducted by Goertz and Duffy (2001) and Carnoy and Loeb
(2004), a strong accountability state was defined as one that had sanctions in place for
schools and students, while a weak accountability state had no sanctions at the local level
for either schools or students. The sample for the full study included relatively low
performing schools, since they are the primary targets of state accountability policy, and
represented a variety of school contexts, in terms of urbanicity, socio-economic status of
the community, and diversity of the student body. A stratified random sampling frame
was developed using 1999-2000 school achievement and context data out of which eight
schools in each state were selected. Fieldwork was carried out during the 2002-03 school
year and involved structured interviews with a set of school and district representatives,
including formal school and district leaders, curriculum specialists, math, English, and
foreign language department heads, and two teachers each from math and English. The
larger study included data collected about goals, challenges, decision-making practices,
informational search strategies, perceptions about accountability, and improvement
efforts underway in the school. Interviews were tape recorded and fully transcribed.
For this paper, we conducted school level analysis of data collected for two high
accountability states (North Carolina and Florida) and two low state accountability states
(Pennsylvania and Michigan). Specifically, we analyzed the goals of math and English
departments using the site summaries prepared by researchers conducting the fieldwork
for each of the 31 schools we studied in these states.3 Although these data and the
analysis are qualitative, we used a data analysis software program, Survey-pro, to
aggregate the data and run simple cross-tabulations. For two states, Pennsylvania and
North Carolina, we then went back to the original 89 interviews to examine in more detail
how and under what conditions high school departments mount organized responses to
accountability. Our analysis expressly compares high and low accountability contexts,
3
One of the Florida schools did not have departments and was therefore excluded from this analysis.
Subject Matters, p 8
with awareness of important design variations within these categories, as well as between
math and English.
The methodology used here has strengths and weaknesses. Our four-state sample
included 192 interviews with teachers, and these interviews provided rich information.
However, the cross-sectional study design included only one visit to each school, so we
were not able to observe departmental organization or to determine how responses to
accountability occurred in real time. In addition, we interviewed three teachers each in
math and English departments, effectively building up a view of the department from the
responses shared by these three teachers. Although our sampling frame called for
interviews with teachers working in different grade levels and we were able to triangulate
responses, a sub-sample of three teachers clearly better represents small and medium size
departments more than large departments and this is a weakness in our design.
Pennsylvania and North Carolina were selected for more detailed analysis because
of the prominence of accountability-related phenomena—testing and standards—in goals
described by teachers in these two states.4 In their respective categories of high and low
accountability, high schools in these two states evidenced the most animation about
accountability. The following pages provide a short description of the features of the
accountability systems in North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
4
Since previous research on high school departments draws so strongly from Michigan and California, it
additionally seemed reasonable not to select these two states for more detailed analysis.
Subject Matters, p 9
Key Features of North Carolina State Accountability System:

The ABC’s The North Carolina accountability system, the ABC’s, was developed
in 1996. The legislature required the state education department to create and
institutionalize a body of state-wide standards for student achievement, a statewide
curriculum, and a statewide assessment system, bringing curriculum, instruction,
and evaluation into alignment.

Schools Targeted Schools are directly accountable to the state, and districts often
play a supporting role to schools. There are no district level rewards or sanctions.

Standard Course of Study The statewide standards are called the Standard Course
of Study, which sets out both the sequence of courses and outlines the knowledge
and skills students should master in each course. Actual curriculum and pacing
guides are left up to districts and schools.

End of Course Exams At the high school level, ten courses include statewide
multiple choice end of course (EOC) exams. EOC’s count for 25% of students
course grade and aggregate EOC scores are used by the state to assess overall
school achievement. The state’s primary indicator of achievement, EOCs are given
in English I, Algebra I, Algebra II, Geometry, Biology, Chemistry, Physical
Science, Physics, US History, ELP (Economic, Legal, and Political Systems)

Competency Test Students must pass the 8th grade Competency Test to graduate
from high school. This test includes both reading and math and is retaken multiple
times if necessary.

Comprehensive Test A 10th grade comprehensive reading and math test has been
introduced to comply with NCLB but since it is not linked to the ABC’s and does
figure into the EOC’s or students’ grades, there is not much consideration given to
it by schools or students.

Rewards and Sanctions Publicly reported scores include the EOC’s, as well as
drop-out rates, college prep track completion, etc. Schools are given a yearly
designation, which is the basis of monetary bonuses for teachers in schools
reaching or exceeding adequate yearly progress (AYP). Sanctions for schools not
reaching AYP after two years include mandatory assistance teams. However, there
are far more schools qualifying to receive sanctioned support than the state has
capacity to follow through on the intervention.

Diploma Pathways Before entering high school, student select one of four diploma
pathways. Each pathway includes specific course requirements that must be
fulfilled to earn a high school diploma in that pathway.
Subject Matters, p 10
Key Features of Pennsylvania State Accountability System:

Benchmarks State provides standards in the form of benchmarks that students
should be able to meet at end of 3rd, 5th, 8th, and 11th grades, but does not provide a
standardized curriculum of pacing schedule.

District Targeted District is therefore given a lot of discretion in ensuring that the
schedule is followed and assessing whether students are progressing to achieve the
benchmarks.

PSSA State monitoring of student progress at the high school level occurs for math
and reading in grade 11 and writing in grades 9 and 11. The tests are called the
Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA).

Rewards and Sanctions Other than the aggregate public reporting of PSSA scores,
districts have little formal accountability to the state. Performance rewards from the
state, in the form of cash payments for improvement, are given at the school level,
while sanctions are meted out at the district level. Sanctions are imposed on districts
in which at least 50% of students district-wide score below basic on the PSSA.
Sanctions are not placed on poorly performing schools in districts with satisfactory
overall performance. Sanctions are in the form of support through the intervention of
a state appointed Academic Advisory Team. After several years of intervention
without improvements, the district may be taken over by the state. The state has very
rarely exercised this power, however.

Curriculum Pennsylvania modified their graduation requirements in 2003 for
students to complete and pass a district-mandated K-12 course list, complete a final
project, and score in the proficient or advanced categories on the Grade 11 PSSA.
However course content varies and local districts have the freedom to pass students
who take exams deemed equivalent to the standard state assessment, add to the
required course list and define the parameters of the final project. As a result, there
is significant variability in both curriculum and instruction.

Changes With passage of No Child Left Behind, Pennsylvania is in the process of
modifying its state accountability policy to report additional student achievement
data and identify schools, and not just districts, that do not meet the standards.
V. Findings
Salience of Accountability
Our first stage of analysis examined whether accountability had penetrated the
goals for math and English departments in the four states. While a variety of goals were
cited, we determined what was the most prominent goal according to frequency and
emphasis. We found a great deal of reference to accountability, in teachers’ goals;
however, teachers in math departments were twice as likely to prioritize accountability
over other goals than were teachers in English departments. Accountability-oriented
Subject Matters, p 11
goals, pertaining foremost to testing but also to standards, were most prominent in 52%
(n=16) of the math departments and 26% (n=8) of the English departments. English
teachers mentioned testing and performance related goals nearly as often as math
teachers, but did not give them comparable emphasis or singular importance. We
expected the relative strength of the accountability system to be reflected in department
goals, with testing and standards-related goals figuring more prominently in both math
and English departments in states with strong accountability systems, and less
prominently in states with weak ones. To some extent this was born out, but only for
math, not English (see Tables 1 and 2). In addition, there was a surprising level of
prominence given to accountability goals in Pennsylvania, in both math and English
departments, despite the weakness of the state system:
State
Math:
Most prominent goal
Testing/standards
Overall
FL
51.6%
71.4%
(n=16)
(n=5)
General academic
41.9%
28.6%
(n=13)
(n=2)
Affective/other
3.2%
0
(n=1)
Table 1. Most prominent math department goal by state.
MI
NC
PA
12.5%
(n=1)
87.5%
(n=7)
100%
(n=8)
0
0
37.5%
(n=3)
50%
(n=4)
12.5%
(n=1)
0
State
English:
Most prominent goal
Testing/standards
Overall
FL
MI
25.8%
28.6%
25.5%
(n=8)
(n=2)
(n=2)
General academic
67.7%
71.4%
75%
(n=21)
(n=5)
(n=6)
Affective/other
9.7%
14.3%
0
(n=3)
(n=1)
Table 2. Most prominent English department goal by state.
NC
PA
25%
(n=2)
75%
(n=6)
37.5%
(n=3)
50%
(n=4)
12.5%
(n=1)
0
To obtain another indicator of the salience of accountability we sought to
determine how much pressure was associated with the state system, specifically in terms
of pressure to change curriculum and instruction. We coded “low pressure” if there was
no spontaneous mention of testing or standards outside of direct probing, and no
Subject Matters, p 12
indication of changes in curriculum or instruction attributed to the accountability system.
“High pressure” was indicated by a clearly articulated sense of the centrality of testing
and/or standards that led to substantial changes in curriculum and instruction. “Moderate
pressure” was located between these two extremes. We looked at the individual teacher
interviews from North Carolina and Pennsylvania, expecting a lower perception of
pressure among Pennsylvania teachers than North Carolina. Findings showed an
opposite pattern, however, with relatively higher pressure reported in Pennsylvania than
North Carolina (Table 3):
Perceived
Accountability Pressure
Low
Overall
State
NC (n=47)
PA (n=42) 5
37%
46.8%
26.2%
(n=33)
(n=22)
(n=11)
Moderate
22.5%
21.3%
23.8%
(n=20)
(n=10)
(n=10)
High
40.4%
31.9%
50.0%
(n=36)
(n=15)
(n=21)
Table 3. Perceived accountability pressure among teachers in math and English
departments in North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
While perceptions of pressure varied between the states, differences in perceptions of
pressure between math and English teachers within each state were also notable. In
Pennsylvania, teachers’ perceptions of accountability pressure showed the same
distribution between math and English teachers, while in North Carolina, math teachers
felt more pressure than English teachers.
Two things are surprising about these data. First, teachers in English departments
in North Carolina, despite the state’s high accountability status, appear remarkably unpressured by accountability concerns. Secondly, teachers in both math and English
departments in Pennsylvania seem surprisingly focused on accountability-related
concerns. These differences appear to be, at least in part, due to the design of the
accountability system in each state. In North Carolina, there are three EOCs under the
purview of high school math departments, Algebra I, Algebra II, and Geometry. By
5
At some rural schools we only interviewed two teachers in each department, making the sample smaller
than specified in the design.
Subject Matters, p 13
contrast, there is only one EOC for English: English I. English departments in North
Carolina have responsibility for the English I EOC score, but not necessarily for the 10th
grade comprehensive test. According to the department head in Lexington High School
in North Carolina,6 while the comprehensive test was previously an essay based on world
literature, and therefore associated with English, it is now “more of a writing test, and is
not necessarily an English test.” Math teachers in North Carolina sometimes referred to
their goals not in generic terms of “the EOCs,” but in terms of students scoring “level 3
or level 4,” proficiency or above. In contrast, English teachers in North Carolina,
particularly in high capacity Maple High School, expressed comparatively more
opposition to the prominence of state testing, by claiming that while their goals were for
students to “meet high standards,” they were “not the EOCs.”
Why did accountability loom as large as it did for both math and English teachers
in Pennsylvania? Our measure of pressure expressly reflected activity relating to
curriculum and instruction. Therefore, much of the “pressure” teachers in Pennsylvania
described indicated current and ongoing curricular activities to better align content and
pacing with the PSSA. In keeping with the design of the Pennsylvania system, district
education offices were very often referenced as prompting or requiring action at the
departmental or subject matter level. Without a uniform state curriculum, most of the
district offices in our Pennsylvania sample have initiated some curricular response to
accountability, including curriculum mapping, curriculum adoption, textbook adoption,
course development, pacing guide development, etc. Drawing on the same data set used
in this study, Weinbaum (2004) confirms the relatively high level of district level
intervention in Pennsylvania, where the accountability system leaves considerable room
for local variation with the result that responses are unpredictable and idiosyncratic. For
nearly all of the schools in our Pennsylvania sample, the current level of district
intervention in high school curriculum and instruction was novel. However, for one
school, Striver High School, this was not the case. Instead the district office introduced
standards-based instruction into math and English years ago, effectively laying the
groundwork for organized departmental responses to accountability today. This case will
be more fully described in the final part of this section.
6
School and district names are pseudonyms.
Subject Matters, p 14
Which elements of the design of the accountability systems in North Carolina
and Pennsylvania captured teachers’ attention? In both systems, the performance of
education units—schools in North Carolina and districts in Pennsylvania—are formally
compared to themselves over time. However, since school level scores are published in
local newspapers, schools can informally and very publicly be compared with each other.
This distortion of the original intention of test scores was equally if not more compelling
to teachers in both North Carolina and Pennsylvania than was a school or district’s
relative growth over time. In North Carolina, where school districts are synonymous
with counties and typically include a number of high schools, teachers often
characterized their schools’ performance relative to other high schools in the county:
“…The last few years we’ve been in last place in the county.”
“…We were a ‘bottom’ school locally…”
“…We are low, lowest in the county…”
In contrast, Maple High School, which is one of the highest performing schools in its
county, enjoys “a lot of good publicity” from the local newspaper, for which faculty felt
fortunate. Pennsylvania has on the whole smaller local education agencies than North
Carolina, and a number of the high schools in our Pennsylvania sample were the only
ones in their districts. Salient comparisons were both local and statewide, with some
teachers expressing fear of their school “falling into the category” with high-profile lowperforming urban jurisdictions in the state. In addition, in Pennsylvania several teachers
expressed real fear that “the state will take over the school,” while in North Carolina
formal sanctions did not appear very worrisome.
Organizational Form of Departments
Drawing on Siskin’s (1994) typology of departments, we coded how teachers in
Pennsylvania and North Carolina characterized departmental interaction around
curriculum and instruction. Siskin’s “split” department type was excluded since it did not
accord well with a characterization of departmental form based on a curriculum and
instruction focus. We found more hybrid than ideal types, with department members
often describing, for example, some fragmentation combined with inclusive collegiality,
or particularistic goals in departments with considerable collaboration. This finding leads
us to present the distribution in terms of tendencies toward fragmentation or bonding,
rather than ideal types. Notably, the pattern of departmental structures diverged
Subject Matters, p 15
considerably in Pennsylvania and North Carolina, with North Carolina showing a strong
tendency toward bundled departments and Pennsylvania showing a bimodal distribution
between fragmentation and bonding. Both state distributions show considerably more
bonding in math than English departments, and more fragmentation in English than math
departments (see Table 4).
Departmental
Structure
Some fragmenting
Bundled
Some Bonding
North Carolina
Pennsylvania
Overall
39.3%
(n=33)
32.1%
(n=27)
28.5%
(n=24)
Math
English
Math
English
9.1%
(n=2)
54.5%
(n=12)
36.3%
(n=8)
43.4%
(n=10)
52.2%
(n=12)
4.3%
(n=1)
42.9%
(n=9)
4.8%
(n=1)
52.4%
(n=11)
66.7%
(n=12)
11.1%
(n=2)
22.2%
(n=4)
Table 4. Departmental structure by state and subject.
Consistent with previous research, few instances of bonded departments were
apparent and bonding—that is, commonly held goals and collaborative work patterns—
was rare in English departments. Even in instances in which some goals were shared at
the department level and the department was an effective locus for collaboration among
teachers, curricular and instructional activities were often carried out in sub-departmental
groupings. Striver High School in Pennsylvania, for example, was unique in our sample
for having substantial bonding in both its English and math departments. However, both
departments were characterized as organizationally “segmented,” with teachers who
teach the same courses and grade levels working collaboratively to support each other
and improve the program. Faculty at Striver, a number of whom were graduates of the
school, occasionally invoked familial metaphors to characterize their school, and English
teachers in particular were committed to “keeping the department legacy going.” Despite
this strong departmental identification, activities around curriculum and instruction more
regularly involved planning, coordination, problem-solving, and sharing within subdepartmental work groups than within the department as a whole. The size of the
departments, with over 20 members each, could have been a factor contributing to subgroup differentiation.
Subject Matters, p 16
How much has accountability contributed to segmentation within departments
like those at Striver High School is an open question, although our findings suggest that
accountability systems do create differentiating conditions for high school departments in
at least two ways. First, the design of accountability systems creates differential impact
for different grade levels and courses. In Pennsylvania, algebra teachers, regardless of
the associated grade, and 11th grade English teachers, were more pressured by the system
than others in their departments. Without course rotation, which was a clear policy in
only one math and one English department in our sample, teachers are differentially
affected by accountability since the burden is not collectivized. In North Carolina, this
differential targeting by the accountability system appears to have frequently prompted
more interaction among teachers associated with tested subjects. Ninth grade English
teachers at Lincoln and Lexington High Schools, for example, were characterized as
more collaborative than tenth grade teachers. In many North Carolina high schools, at
least some teachers in math and English departments are talking more than in the past,
and are talking about the EOC’s and the SCOS. This is not to say that accountability
prescriptions can automatically create bonding out of fragmented organizational
conditions. For example, in one North Carolina high school that had received
intervention from an assistance team due to low performance, Southern High School,
fragmentation continued to prevail despite the fact that teachers were “supposed to be
working together now.”
The second differentiating influence of accountability affected English
departments more so than math departments, particularly in Pennsylvania, and appeared
directly related to the nature of English as a subject. The current wave of accountability
emphasizes state-wide testing aligned with state-wide standards, benchmarks, and in the
case of North Carolina, state-wide curriculum. In most English departments in
Pennsylvania the standards-based approach to instruction had not been adopted prior to
the introduction of the PSSA, and therefore the now heightened emphasis on standards
and testing appears to have precipitated or accentuated generational divisions among
teachers, specifically “traditional” ones and those “going with the trend” as one English
teacher at Lakewood High School put it. At Striver High School in Pennsylvania, where
there are a substantial number of teachers who had long tenures at the school, the English
department chair anticipated this issue in claiming that the veteran teachers in her
Subject Matters, p 17
department “rise to any challenge” and “adjust in any way they have to.” It is possible
that factors contributing to bonding in a department, and the corollary continuous
improvement outlook that it encourages, lessen the consequences of these philosophical
rifts. Also, based on the lack of inter-generational tension described for English
departments in North Carolina, it appears that a uniform curriculum provided by a
centralized educational authority (the state or district) reduces opportunity for or
adjudicates between these rifts even in the absence of bonding in a department.
Departmental and Subject Matter Responses to Accountability
In this final section of results, we examine how English and math departments in
the two states responded to accountability, and how these responses appear to be
constrained by the design of accountability systems and by the nature of the subject
matter. We argue that accountability design provides particular latitude for action, or
“flexibility” in the parlance of NCLB, within the constraints of subject matter and
organizational form.
In North Carolina, curricular activities are largely precluded from possible actions
that departments might take to improve performance, since the state provides the SCOS.
Apart from the widespread adoption of test preparation and the introduction of a new
reading program at Southern High School introduced by the state assistance team,
intensification was the most common collective strategy of improvement in North
Carolina. Among North Carolina math teachers, “working harder” was a consistent
refrain. Several attributed low EOC math scores at their school in the past to “lazy
teachers,” who “didn’t care.” The “ladder-like” quality of math as a subject, as one
teacher at Grant High School characterized it, seemed to promote intensification as a way
to increase performance. The math chair at Legacy High School, where the department is
partially bonded, saw accountability as positive in directing teachers to “work and work
together,” by which he meant to ensure that students are prepared for the next course in
the sequence:
“It’s making everyone work where before we had some teachers that were
here just for the paycheck. We had teachers that really weren’t doing what
they were supposed to. We all have to work because if I don’t teach them
Algebra I, then how do you expect them to do Geometry? Then how do
you expect them to do Algebra II? We all have to work together and
that’s what we’re doing here, we’re all working together.”
Subject Matters, p 18
However, this intensification approach—just working harder—met with a mixed
response among English teachers in North Carolina, depending on perceptions of the
quality and effort of English instruction at the school in the past. Bell High School
recently assigned three “hard working veteran teachers” to the EOC English course,
English I, and has seen improvements. However, the English chair at Grant High School
believed that although accountability may be good for a weak teacher, “it’s bad for a
good teacher,” in “limiting” their creativity and therefore responsiveness to students.
While the intensification response was not contingent on the organizational form
of the department, a more structural response to accountability in North Carolina did
appear to be contingent on the degree of bonding and the capacity to mobilize department
members toward a common purpose. Three math departments in North Carolina focused
on student placement as an issue. At Lexington High School a math teacher described his
biggest challenge as having too many students in classes “who are really not suited to go
on to the next level,” but who are supposed to advance because of requirements in their
chosen diploma pathway. In this fragmented department, full of “lone rangers” who do
not like “following the pack,” all this teacher could do was to try to intensify his
assistance to students and persuade failing ones to switch pathways. In contrast, in Ivy
High School, math teachers in the highly bonded department collectively recognized
student placement as both a problem and an area over which they still have “some
control.” Interestingly, the department chair invoked the power of “the state” in
rationalizing the department’s response:
“There are so many situations that we cannot control that we felt [student
placement] was one thing that we could…Our children and our parents in
this community have a tendency to feel that they have the right to be in
any class, and they do have that right as long as they meet the criteria, but
it’s not always the best thing for them….Every child in the high school is
recommended by the department for a math class, and we recommend it
through the Guidance Department. If they do not sign up for the class that
we have recommended, if they want to take a more advanced class, maybe
an honors level class or a more advanced class than we recommend, then
they must get a waiver form signed that says basically: ‘you were
recommended for Class X and have chosen to try Class Y, and therefore
should understand that you may not receive the kind of grade you’d like
because that was not the State’s recommendation.’”
Subject Matters, p 19
The Ivy math department’s success in gaining more control over student placement in its
courses required ensuring that the Guidance Department, which oversees students’
progression through their chosen diploma pathway, “understood what our concerns are.”
Similarly, Grant High School’s math department, which is somewhat bonded, also
focused on student placement as a response to ensuring high EOC scores, collectively
settling on a “C or better rule” for students to achieve in a course before being allowed
into the next higher level math course.
Responses to accountability among the math and English departments in our
Pennsylvania sample were both more active and more variable than in North Carolina,
which while not predictable from the weakness of the Pennsylvania accountability system
is however predictable from the system’s broader latitude for action and inclusion of
curriculum as a locus of activity. In a number of Pennsylvania districts, curriculum
mapping is underway, pacing guides are being developed, and curriculum is being
revised either by or with the oversight of the district office. It is notable that in Striver
High School, which had the most bonded math and English departments in our sample,
major work on the curriculum had been prompted by PSSA scores. If scores do not
improve, Striver teachers will focus on improving the curriculum, instead of either on
teachers working harder or student placement, as occurred in North Carolina.
Among math departments in Pennsylvania, accountability consistently led to
concern over curricular coverage, and to a lesser extent, writing in math. In Ivy and
Orthodox High Schools, where the math departments had a mix of bonding and bundling,
math departments rearranged math content sequence to make sure material on the PSSA
was covered before the test. This tweaking approach to improvement contrasts with the
most bonded math department in our sample, Striver High School, where a new
integrated math curriculum was selected to address coverage issues and also because of
its emphasis on word problems. Notably, while Striver High School’s district office
made the initial broad decision to change to integrated math, program selection and
implementation was left to the department. Other district offices in Pennsylvania have
not relied on departmental organization in this way. Forrest County in fact “took away
department meetings,” as one teacher put it, replacing them with district-organized
professional development sessions.
Subject Matters, p 20
The PSSA includes word problems that require written responses from students,
necessitating “math writing,” according to a teacher at Mountain View High School, that
“teaches [students] English in math class” as a resistant veteran of Forest Pines
characterized it. While the PSSA has therefore to some extent introduced English into
the math curriculum by students to explain their answers in writing, it has similarly
introduced features associated with math and foreign language into the English
curriculum. By promoting a version of English that is relatively more defined, less
dynamic, and more sequential (Stodolsky and Grossman 1995) accountability in
Pennsylvania has, at least in part, restructured English. Some English teachers
downplayed the influence of accountability by arguing that its focus on reading and
writing skills is inherent in the “inner make-up of the English teacher,” and consistent
with “issues we’ve always been addressing.” There was, however, some indication of a
narrowing of the parameters of English as a subject matter in comparison to the multiple
possible paradigmatic versions of English that Ball and Lacey (1980) found teachers can
embrace. English teachers in Pennsylvania were more likely to talk about “literacy” than
literature, and more about “skills” and “strategies” than creativity. At Ivy High School, a
district-led curriculum-mapping effort in English is, according to one teacher, “based on
the skills, skills that we need to teach them.” Literature-oriented instruction had not
been totally displaced, but, especially in courses for lower level students and 9th graders,
a skills and literacy focus was seen as an important complement to literature and an
effective means to teach the standards. Importantly, a shift in thinking about English as
skill development moves English closer to being a subject where curriculum coverage
and possibly sequence matters. An English teacher at Ivy High School, for example,
explained how students are placed into a PSSA-inspired course for 10th graders according
to their proficiency level scores on a supplementary district test, which then allows
teachers to “zone in on the specific skills that they are lacking.”
Conclusion
Our findings show that accountability design sets at least some of the parameters
within which high school departments respond by structuring the kinds of actions that are
possible. Archbald and Porter (1994) foresee two possible models of the department
emerging in response to centralized curriculum control at the state or district level. In the
first, higher department influence emerges to coordinate information sharing, problem
Subject Matters, p 21
discussion, and coverage coordination. In the second, lower departmental influence
emerges because control policies replace some of the roles and decisions departments
would otherwise assume. Consistent with Archbald and Porter’s first model, we found
that bonded departments, although very rare in our sample, were able to identify
accountability-related problems and take collective action to enhance their performance
within the parameters of action enabled by central education authorities. Somewhat
inconsistent with Archbald and Porter’s second model, however, we found that in some
fragmented and bundled departments, centrally determined curricular activities prompted
teachers to interact more around curriculum and instruction, at least to those within their
department who shared the same courses or grade levels. In contexts where departments
were organizationally very weak, accountability could therefore prompt more inclusivity
and mobilization around collective goals but not necessarily involving the entire
department. Generally, regardless of department type, we found that most coordination
and collaboration occurred not with generic subject matter colleagues but within
departmental sub-groupings with colleagues who shared courses and grade levels, and
were therefore similarly affected by accountability.
Our findings also indicate that subject matter itself can be redefined by
accountability design. Specifically, in Pennsylvania, emphasis on language and
communication skills in English has promoted an English paradigm with features
somewhat akin to those identified for math and foreign language, specifically in being
relatively defined, sequential, and static. This has not, however, led to an increase in
department-wide coordination since in most departments, not all teachers are similarly
affected by accountability. It appears likely therefore that in the context of standardsbased accountability, it is not just the invisible structure of the subject matter department
that differentiates high school teachers, but how different grade levels and courses, and
therefore teachers, within a department are implicated in the accountability system.
Subject Matters, p 22
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