Stories Of Contradiction In Policy And Practice: Challenging The Unspoken Realities Of Accountability Policies In Public Education

The purpose of this study is to understand the subjective reality of a teacher working in a low-performing school and how this reality influences their self-efficacy and autonomy in the classroom. The effectiveness of using designations and performance grades to rate a school or a teacher’s ability to perform within socially constructed standards will be questioned. This research examines the influence of school performance designations based on the personal experiences of teachers as they approach planning for instruction. A qualitative approach using narrative inquiry is used to capture the voices of teachers in North Carolina’s public schools as they navigate through the discourses of legislative mandates. The told stories of the participants capture the human experience while at the same time provide for a clearer picture of the reality of the work in which teachers are immersed on a daily basis. The data from this study suggests that teacher perceptions of being designated low performing or ineffective have a dramatically negative impact on what happens in the classroom, which also perpetuates low-performance in highly impacted schools. The unintended consequences of accountability policies are detailed in the participant’s stories which support the contradiction between policy and practice.