Drawing on case studies of three elementary school teachers in a diverse urban school setting in Texas, the author explores the varied ways teachers actively read accountability‐related curriculum policies and then respond to these policies. Rooted in classroom observations and extensive teacher interviews, the author examines issues of teacher identity and identity formation as a base from which to explore teacher agency vis‐à‐vis accountability‐explicit curriculum policies. His analysis suggests that (1) individual teachers actively read and respond to locally conceived accountability‐explicit curriculum policies in varied, perhaps even unique, ways; (2) teacher identities are powerful means through which to understand these varied experiences with and responses to accountability‐explicit curriculum policies; and (3) current understandings of teacher agency vis‐à‐vis accountability‐explicit curriculum policies as merely a capacity to resist—as does much of the literature that is critical of accountability—obfuscates important issues of teacher quality and equity.

HE DECEMBER 2000 Kappan featured a very important contribution to the current discourse on standards-based school reform. "Thinking Carefully About Equity and Accountability," by James Scheurich, Linda Skrla, and Joseph Johnson, invited readers to take part in a dialogue on these issues. 1 At the heart of our disagreement with Scheurich and his colleagues is the subject of the standardsbased school reform movement, which has come to dominate most discussions in education today and which has spawned a great deal of scholarly literature, conferences, symposia, and even litigation. We wish to focus here on several misconceptions, omissions, and flaws in the argument put forth by Scheurich and his colleagues. We have organized our response around the following points: the common ground we share, the flaws in their "historic possibilities" thesis, their misconception of accountability as a dichotomy, and our vision of equity and accountability.

In this article, I offer a review of the ethnographic research that reports the effects of current accountability policies on minority youth. Included in this article are qualitative investigations that have significant field-based components, most especially direct observations at the classroom level. In this article, I demonstrate both the power and potential of ethnography to offer clearer, more detailed portraits of the varied ways that current accountability policies affect teachers of minority youth, the curriculum and pedagogy that minority youth experience, minority youth in general, and the schooling of minority youth. [accountability, ethnography, minority youth, educational policy] There has indeed been a proliferation of discourse within both the popular media and the educational literature concerning the promises and pitfalls of current state and national accountability policies. In nearly every educational setting, conference, or research symposia, conversations are dominated by, or quickly turn to, current accountability policies like those outlined in the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001. This discourse is replete with claims and counterclaims concerning the effects of such policies on curriculum, pedagogy, schooling as a public endeavor, educational equity, teachers, students and their schooling experience, and communities.A review of the educational literature concerning the effects of current NCLB-style, high-stakes accountability on minority youth reveals that little of this discourse has been generated through ethnographic work. Although such works are scarce, that does not mean they are totally absent. In what follows, I offer a review of this ethnographic research and what it adds to the public and academic discourses on current accountability policies. Included in this article are qualitative investigations that have significant field-based components, most especially direct observations at the classroom level. This article demonstrates both the power and potential of ethnography to offer clearer, more detailed portraits of the varied ways current accountability policies affect teachers of minority youth, the curriculum and pedagogy that minority youth experience, minority youth in general, and minority youth education. Effects on Teachers of Minority YouthA review of the research on the effects of current accountability policies like those spelled out in NCLB reveals that such policies affect teachers of minority youth in two profound ways. The first involves the ways such policies affect teachers personally and professionally, and the second involves the ways such policies influence, even shape, their decisions about curriculum and pedagogy. In this section, I briefly 24

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