AUSTIN — Today, the Texas Public Policy Foundation released a report by Center for Education Freedom Director Kent Grusendorf and Senior Fellow Allan Parker on the lack of ultimate responsibility for success in education. The paper, “Accountability in Education: Who is Responsible?” discusses how choice in education provides the best system of accountability.
“Who is responsible for student achievement in our current education system –voters, governors, legislators, school board members, superintendents, teachers, or parents? This long list of characters that might be responsible shows us part of the problem,” said Grusendorf. “No successful enterprise has so many potentially responsible leaders. No single person or entity is in charge or ultimately responsible.
“Despite decades of reform efforts, and despite the efforts of many fine people operating within the system, our top-down system does not produce real accountability,” said Parker. “Choice transfers power from the political elite, to the consumer of education. Under this model, education funding would be child-centered rather than system centered.”
To read the full report, visit: http://txpo.li/education-accountability
The Honorable Kent Grusendorf, Senior Fellow for Education, represented Arlington in the Texas Legislature for twenty years, focusing on education. Serving on the House Public Education Committee and various Select Committees, he played a significant role in crafting legislative responses to the Edgewood I, Edgewood II, Edgewood III, Edgewood IV, and West Orange Cove school-finance court decisions.
Allan Parker is a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and president of the Justice Foundation. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics with honors from the University of Oklahoma, then went on to the University of Texas Law School and graduated number one in his class with honors. After his education, Mr. Parker became a partner with a law firm that represented numerous school districts and was involved with personnel terminations, due process hearings and cases before the Commissioner of Education. Mr. Parker taught Education Law & Civil Procedure at St. Mary’s University School of Law from 1987-1993 in San Antonio.
The Texas Public Policy Foundation is a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin, Texas.