The word “audit” comes from the Latin word “to hear”. This references the role of the “auditor” in medieval Europe - as the one tasked with listening to official reports by responsible representatives and confirming their accuracy. Auditing as a practice extends even further into the annuals of history though. Evidence of auditing have been found in the official records for ancient China, Egypt, and Greece. Though execution varied by context - audits served the same general function. They were a set of tools to meet the perceived need to gather information or reassurance about the appropriate use of resources by individuals. Since interested individuals, who were those in leadership positions, are unable to obtain this information for themselves, they relayed on auditors and their reports to gather and present this valuable data. These reports were usually on things like collection of taxes, government spending, agricultural yields, and so forth.

Using the data from audits, leaders could exert a more exacting control. With the audit mechanism they could monitor the flow of resources from afar while enforcing accountability to their mandated standards. So if an ancient Chinese auditor found that their assigned province did not contribute its required grain tax, then the Emperor’s court could adjust their book keeping and take action to ensure it did not happen again. In other words, audits are nothing new. They are historical tools that have been used for thousands of years to measure, count, track, and control the management of resources.

However, they became increasingly integral to business practice during the Industrial Revolution (starting approximately in the 1840’s). It was then that audits were picked up by the burgeoning managers of private industry. These new industrial leaders (and their investors) needed to ensure that their accounting books, which detailed the movements of vast amounts of money and resources, were free from fraud and error. As the American and British economy continued to boom (and sometimes bust) through the Industrial Revolution and beyond into the post war years, audits became increasingly entrenched into corporate practice.

In the decades following the 1960’s audits continued to evolve as economies grew increasingly complex. Audits weren’t just for checking accuracy or detecting fraud anymore. Businesses were now more complicated and extended and they needed the ability to monitor the performance of large numbers of dispersed individuals and resources. Their very structure required that audits become part of the system to lead such enterprises. Without a regular stream of data to gage performance how could businesses make informed decisions? And even more pressingly - how could they ensure their money and resources were being used in ways that maximized profits? Audits in effect became baked into the very structure of business practice in capitalist democratic countries like America.

How do audits function in schools?

As my administrator evaluated me, he used tools that in hindsight appear to me more suited for tracking assembly line worker productivity than educational outcomes.  If a student had her head down, I would be marked down a point on my evaluation. If I forget to announce the standard covered for that day, another deduction would ensue. That fact that none of these instances substantially represented my teaching ability or students’ learning was conveniently overlooked. The contextual, multi-facted, and nuanced art of teaching was reduced to a 5 category rubric of mandated practices. Like all auditors, my administrator used these standards to “measure” my performance. His measurements were then translated into documented conclusions about my “efficiency” and “quality” as a teacher. It is no wonder myself and my colleagues found this process anxiety inducing. In fact, being the object of audit scrutiny is unnerving, regardless if you are a teacher, student, or even school district.

That is because conclusions drawn the audit “data” are highly influential in the decisions made by educational leaders.  This is especially vexing because usually these leaders are far away from the people and organizations they are running. Meanwhile those being audited have little input into the metrics used to gage their success. In my example, audit data, designed to enforce compliance and control, was used to draw conclusions about my ability to promote student learning. The conclusions drawn from this data had real consequences for me professionally and physiologically. For example, receiving a low evaluation score would forever be accessible to future employers, not to mention shake my sense of professional confidence. Elsewhere too the audit regimes operating in public education often have led to profound consequences. Some  examples include:

• Third grade honor students in Florida are denied graduation to fourth grade because their parents chose to legally opt them out of state standardized reading test.

• The Prince George School District in Maryland is scandalized after it is discovered  that 30% of their graduating seniors failed to meet graduation requirements. The teachers and administrators involved claim they were pressured to raise the graduation rate by the school system’s executive as he attempted  to “reform” the struggling district.

• Denver teachers went on strike for 3 days to successfully protest contractual conditions that stipulated merit based pay based on student performance that caused their income to fluctuate widely from year to year.

• Schools in the 100% charter school system of New Orleans are routinely closed when they are judged as “failing” by their students’ standardized tests scores.

Further, by voluntarily internalizing the various audit regimes recipients often start to view and govern themselves using their logic. One common manifestation of this self-governance in public school setting is to the self-imposed pressure among educators to “teach to the test.” This is problematic considering that the metrics of the audit (in this case standardized tests as indicators of learning) are rarely created with the input of the people and systems that they affect (students, teachers, and schools). What is even more troubling is the damaging effects of the audit regime on marginalized students from minority or low income background and their teachers. Audits are championed as THE tool to close the achievement gap.But in reality they have been documented to at best do nothing to the achievement gap or at worst exacerbate it. All the while “struggling” students and their teachers are continually labeled as failures using parameters they had no stake in creating. The audit regimes wield a considerable force in both the formal and informal decisions made in schools. Thus taking a moment to consider how the welter of activity happening in school is turned into audit-table data may be useful for educators interested in better understanding the powerful force of the audit regimes.

Practices that fall into the audit regime are typically those that are deemed by the powers that to be critical for monitor and controlling all aspects of teaching and learning including educators’ professional work. For schools this would include data like student achievement, teacher quality, and school effectiveness.. But to reduce such complex sociocultural actions, such as achievement, quality, and effectiveness into measurable quantities requires certain translation practices - specifically transparency, observability, and standardization.

For example when I received my performance evaluation I accepted being subjected to the observation of the auditor (transparency). The auditor used a 5 category rubric to assess my performance in relation to an idealized set of performance standards (standardization). The auditor then calculated my score based on what he was personally able to witness in that particular visit (observability). Through this process the rich and vibrant practices of teaching and learning are oversimplified into a few numerical indicators. Yet reducing the vast field of human activity into such narrow terms inherently ignores a host of influential processes that happen outside that meteric’s parameters. It also begs the question why systemic inequalities that are highly impactful to schools, such as growing wealth inequality,  the resegregation of American schools, etc.) fall so neatly out of detection. Audits claim to produce reliable and objective data justified in making important decisions. Yet they paradoxically produce data that is so oversimplified and surface level that it is unable to capture numerous influential factors affecting the variable being measured.An extreme example of this problematic can be found in the Bushwick Community High School in Brooklyn.The school was labeled a failure and faced closure due to low graduation rates. Yet the audit data failed to highlight that Bushwick was a school that primarily admitted 17-18 year students with little to no high school credits. The graduation rates also failed to represent the successes Bushwick achieved in graduating students who never thought they could receive a high school diploma.

The validity of audit data is questionable at best. Yet both policymakers and laypersons find it attractive because its numerical form makes it easy to compare and rank schools and teachers.  Numerous academics in education and policy have have voiced serious doubts about the validity and reliability of the audit regimes used for measuring teacher performance. They like many teachers and students doubt the claims that the audit regime utilizes rigorous objective, and fair assessments. In fact it seems like only the powers that be that instigate the audit regime believe that numerical data can represent human activity effectively. Without such data, it would be difficult to legitimize decisions like closing schools or failing students. The audit regime has thus been called “governing by numbers” as its reduce complex processes to simple numerical indicators for purposes of management and control. All the while the overemphasis on data, statistics, and competitive rankings fuel an increasing infatuation with numerical data as the ultimate indicator of qualitative concepts like excellence, value, and effectiveness.The “data driven” instruction movement, which encourages teachers to use student test scores to drive their instruction, provides an example of  how the fetishization of numerical data operates within the audit regime.

When students, teachers, schools, or entities have their value quantifiably judged they can internalize the standards of the audit as the standards they hold themselves to.  Previous indicators may fall out of view as audit standards crowd the frame of what is considered success. In other words, audits govern in 2 directions. By quantifying social practices into narrow calculations, audits allow leaders to make decisions despite being removed from the context while also encouraging those who are being audited to take on its standards of success instead of their own. Of course, it cannot be denied that while audit regimes have been, on the whole, disastrous for public education in the United States, they have also contributed to some positive outcomes as well. For example, audit data has been helpful in highlighting the achievement gap between white students and students of color. They also have uncovered school board embezzlement of tax payer dollars.

Barbian, E., Gonzales, G., Mejia, P., Christensen, L., & Au, W. (2016). Activism is Good Teaching: Reclaiming the Profession. Retrieved from https://www.rethinkingschools.org/articles/activism-is-good-teaching

Adams, R. (2018, November 5). 'Audit culture' causing staff burnout in schools, report finds. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/nov/05/audit-culture-staff-burnout-england-schools-department-for-education