During the last decades, education governance increasingly relies on performance-based accountability instruments, which national governments adopt to steer assumingly increasing fragmented, complex and multi-layered education systems from a distance (Gunter et al., 2016). Performance-based accountability (PBA) is the result of assembling data collection instruments - such as external evaluations - with systems of information and incentives’ schemes (Verger et al., 2019). Due to their outcomes-based orientation, PBA systems tend to be adopted in parallel to education monitoring tools, learning standard frameworks, school improvement plans, and performance contracts aiming to increase quality and transparency (e.g. Strathern, 2000). A key assumption is that holding schools accountable for the achievement of learning standards, and attaching consequences to their degree of success, will encourage school actors to adopt more effective educational strategies (Mintrop, 2006). PBA is also expected to generate both new forms of performative pressure and new sources of data that school actors should use to promote instructional improvement and address learning gaps (Prøitz et al., 2017).

Evidence on the circumstances and mechanisms under which these policy initiatives generate their intended effects or, otherwise, side- or unintended-effects remains inconclusive. Many studies indicate that performance data, standards and accountability have the potential of generating increased awareness and motivation, leading to the adoption of targeted development strategies and changes in instruction (e.g. Perryman, 2010) and have a positive impact on student achievement (Hanushek and Raymond, 2005). Other studies show how PBA can generate side-effects and opportunistic behavior, including curriculum narrowing, cheating and non-inclusive educational practices (e.g. Falabella, 2014). Up until today, evidence remains inconclusive regarding the specific conditions and mechanisms likely to generate intended as well as unintended effects on the teaching profession and on school actors' practices and behaviour.

Beyond policy design variables and their initial policy intentions, PBA systems are co-constructed by a range of intermediary and street-level agents, such as local governments, teachers and school principals etc., who are involved in the process of transferring, translating, and re-contextualizing PBA instruments from the regulatory to the practice level. From the enactment perspective, it is pivotal to understand that PBA systems might differ as well in how policy actors operating at different levels interpret, re-signify, use and/or resist PBA-related instruments (Ball et al., 2012).

The papers in this double symposium focus on different ways of enacting PBA in education and aim to explore how different accountability system designs and configurations are enacted in different contexts, and their intended or unintended consequences for the teaching profession and school practices. Special attention is given to the interplay between discourses, actors strategies and the various instruments of the policy enacted in the everyday life of teachers and schools. The country-cases covered in the symposium, such as Australia, Chile, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, UK and USA examine and analyze how school actors make sense of, experience and translate new policy demands, respond to performative pressure and expectations around increased datafication, the use of student performance data, and with what implications. The variety of cases covered allows for a better understanding of the circumstances and mechanisms that determine different outcomes, educational practices and organizational responses. As such, the symposium will promote reflections on how different accountability designs might generate different effects when enacted at district and school levels in diverse institutional and school settings, and in terms of targeting institutions or specific school actors. The analyses cover both high-stakes and lower-stakes accountability systems, enabling a comparison between different types of accountability regimes.

Ball, S. J., Maguire, M., and Braun, A. (2012). How Schools Do Policy: Policy Enactments in Secondary Schools. London: Routledge. Falabella A (2014) The performing school: The effects of market and accountability policies. Education Policy Analysis Archives 22(70): 1–26. Gunter, H., Hall, D., Serpieri, R., and Grimaldi, E. (2016). New Public Management and the Reform of Education: European Lessons for Policy and Practice. London: Routledge. Hanushek, R. E. & Raymond, M. E. (2005). Does school accountability lead to improved student performance? Journal of Policy Analysis, 24(2), 297–327. Mintrop, H. (2004). Schools on Probation: How Accountability Works (And Doesn’t Work). New York: Teachers College Press. Prøitz, T.S., Mausethagen, S. & Skedsmo, G. (2017): Investigative modes in research on data use in education. Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, 3(1), p. 42-55. Strathern, M. (2000). The Tyranny of Transparency. British Educational Research Journal, 26(3), 309-321. Verger, A., L. Parcerisa, and C. Fontdevila. 2019. “The Growth and Spread of National Assessments and Test-based Accountabilities: A Political Sociology of Global Education Reforms. Educational Review, 71/1, 5–30.