Accountability in Education: Discussion Paper.

To make the education system more open and accountable, Alberta (Canada) designated in 1994 the formation of an MLA (Member of Legislative Assembly) implementation team for educational accountability. The MLA team is consulting with Albertans about which results should be included in school reports, which measures should be used to report educational outcomes, and how the results should be communicated. This document is comprised of a discussion paper, which is being used by the MLA team to conduct a third, broader phase of consultation with educational stakeholders during January and February 1995. Following the introduction, section 2 summarizes themes that emerged from the MLA team's consultations, some of which include: (1) parents want more information and better access to results at all levels of reporting; (2) people feel that accountability data must be used to improve education; (3) the public wants to be involved in developing improvement plans; (4) people want to know how the budget relates to educational outcomes; (5) student results should reflect the range of academic and nonacademic achievements; and (6) measures must make sense and be closely linked to improvement goals. Section 3 contains a prototype school report and school board report. The fourth section reports what consultants said they wanted to see regarding contextual information, student results, financial information, satisfaction measures, improvement goals and action plans, communication of educational outcomes, and their suggestions for improving the prototype reports. An attached booklet contains a questionnaire for gathering feedback on the prototype reports. (LMI)