Integrity and Accountability in the Workplace

Accountability and integrity are the backbones of current education policies. The two ethical aspects are characterized by external evaluation and emphasis on the findings or the outcomes. Education is considered as the basis of development in each country. It is the reason for fundamental literacy, skills acquisition, technology transformation, and the ability to safeguard the ecosystem's natural resources for development equitably. However, it is still faced with numerous problems across the United States. The main areas of concern are inadequate accountability and integrity in the school systems, politics surrounding employment, and lack of correct quality assurance and control mechanism supervision. Each organization, either public or private schools, is developed and sustained to attain particular stipulated goals. One of the crucial dimensions in the education system is achieving school goals and ensuring quality service delivery. Accountability and integrity etiquette is an essential aspect because the school performance is linked with organizational goals. There are, therefore, goal-oriented activities from the input dimensions. The primary evaluation tool to ascertain integrity and accountability in the school system is the teacher's appraisal. Teacher performance appraisal is an effective tool to measure educational institutions' success and assure stakeholders that maximum integrity and accountability are practiced. 

Accountability in The Education System 

The concept of education accountability is systematically evaluated in several dimensions. Ethically, the study views accountability as the school readiness to offer an evaluation or justification to current stakeholders for personal judgment, intention, act, and omission when a person is called upon to explain the performance records. It is the preparedness to have one's actions evaluated by other people and, where appropriate accept responsibility for mistakes, incorrect judgment, negligence, and realization for competence, thoroughness, success, and knowledge. It also implies that all educational system stakeholders are answerable to one's behaviors and responsibilities (Cochran-Smith et al., 2017). Accountability is the phenomenon of being accountable to authorities in education and resources utilized within the school setting. The aspect is assessing how all the available materials in a workable school system are used for maximum efficiency and productivity. 

Accountability in the school systems focuses on deciding on what records to be maintained when it comes to its processes, methodologies, and forms to be utilized. These records will be used to evaluate school performance in terms of attainment of the stipulated goals. A study argues that schools' accountability has been given much attention because educational institutions are essential systems in society that must adhere to checks and balances. Additionally, schools are mainly funded by the community through taxes and must essentially exercise some degree of evaluation in educational procedures. 

Educational accountability improves teaching and learning. It ensures that there is no misuse of public resources and equipment among teachers. The aspect also enhances the school goals' recognition and helps strengthen the educational system to offer a meaningful report to recognize school objectives. It also helps in identifying what goals teachers should achieve with provided resources within a certain period. Accountability also encourages the maintenance of records and procedures of all resources distributed to attain effective learning and teaching (Cochran-Smith et al., 2018). School administrators are usually accountable for the quality and effectiveness of the school's goals and objectives. They are in charge of the teaching process and must ensure the school's correct evaluation of procedures. Educational administrators are also accountable to parents who have entrusted their children to learn in a certain school. Teachers also depend on the school management's leadership skills to ensure the correct working environment for learning. 

Integrity 

Academic integrity is the fundamental principle that is essential to the success of the school system. Integrity in schools is significant in learning, teaching, and research. It involves the continuous development of a complex network of techniques and responsibilities across the school committed. Gunawan et al. (2020) argue that many schools are dedicating their time to offering educational approaches to academic integrity. It implies recognizing that learners need to be supported to develop and achieve maximum literary techniques that will be important in their future careers. When the schools practice integrity, it means that the community enables learners, teachers, and school administrators to have the freedom to develop new ideas, understand and foster creativity while considering and honoring others' work. The school means that they respond proactively to any form of misconduct in a precise, honest, open, and timely way. Many schools follow the Privacy Policy and Records Management Policy that ensures proper maintenance of information and results. These records are kept in safety and confidentiality. Also, educational integrity provides consistent quality performance and evaluates the occurrence and form of misconduct. It also enables school administrators to take appropriate actions to address the reasons for misconduct. Additionally, the school community will have guidelines to ensure that the integrity is kept in an arrangement through all stakeholders' collaboration. 

Teachers` ethical attainment plays a fundamental role in the school systems' real impact on integrity education. Many schools are implementing programs such as moral education for teachers and the code of ethics provided in the department of education. These programs help teachers across the country integrate the needs of integrity education and create a clean school culture. For instance, Gunawan et al. (2020) found that moral accomplishment is a vital factor in evaluating teachers' promotion together with numerous awards. Many schools also have implemented programs that empathize on fairness, justice, and honesty. These aspects will ensure there is a transparent structure and well-coordinated integrity school system. 

Effectiveness of Teacher Performance Appraisal 

Enhancing the education system's quality and equity relies mainly on individual teachers' motivation and performance to foster integrity and accountability. Teacher performance appraisal is the quality control tool that focuses on feedback for instructors to increase teaching quality and professional learning. It provides a means to recognize and reward honest and responsible teachers. They will also act as role models in which other teachers can learn from them to replicate their success. It assists the school community in identifying instructors who need support, such as additional training to be effective. Teacher performance appraisal is a fundamental factor in realizing learners` achievement and vital to enhancing educational outcomes. Continuous monitoring and evaluating assist teachers in performing best while teaching. 

Effective teacher appraisal offers mechanisms to facilitate the school system to recognize personal talents, performance, and motivation. It enables teachers to increase their performance, tackle concerns about the attractiveness of teaching due to the availability of integrity and accountability in school systems. With this in place, the school organization will realize a positive image and stats in the community. When it falls in line with an overall dedication to performance, teacher appraisal strengthens the need for monitoring and accountability. In public funding, the methods offer schools a technique to be accountable for learners' quality of education. It enables school administrators and whole stakeholders to evaluate individual instructor's performance and ensure that that all learners are in the hand of able and motivated professionals (Zhang & Ng, 2016). It also offers an avenue to reconsider instructors who are continuously underperforming and not agreeing to professional development opportunities. 

Teacher appraisal has become a necessity for many schools in the 21st century due to increased available information. This aspect has changed the nature of the school. Teachers have been instructed to shift from traditional teaching techniques to knowledge transition and adopted new curricula that emphasize the instructor's significance to help learners acquire modem skills such as self-directed learning, problem-solving skills, collaboration, and creative thinking. These techniques require constructivist techniques for teaching and learning. 

Additionally, the education system has become more diverse regarding language and cultural backgrounds, learners' socio-economic nature, ethnicity, and race. These issues have forced school administrators to ensure that teachers focus on all learners' social cohesion and wellness while providing differentiation in teachers to respond to personal learning requirements. Most schools are currently offering inclusive teaching for learners with special educational needs, which implies that teachers must have proficiencies in this sector or share ideas with specialists. In this context, teachers are increasingly forced to work beyond teaching in the classroom and collaborate with parents and the broad community. 

Additionally, the current educational governance is more structured to embrace integrity and accountability in school due to the increase in decentralization and autonomy. These two upcoming events have resulted in unique responsibilities in the school system because it demands instructors to participate in broadly distributed leadership and managerial duties. Gunawan et al. (2020) demonstrate that many schools are implementing the latest working methods that evolve around collaborative and collegial teaching, which is conducted in teach and wider professional learning communities. This phenomenon shows that their vast need for teacher appraisal to understand the progressive nature of the latest development and ensuring that there is the maintenance of professional development among the tutors. 

Pros and Cons of Teacher Appraisal 

Pros 

The main benefit of teachers` appraisal is to enable school administrators to evaluate teachers' presence and past achievements concerning their performance guidelines. It is the structure that helps them understand their duties, goals, expectations, and performance accomplishment that will enhance accountability and integrity in school. Appraising performance implies that performance guidelines have been developed and feedback is provided to teachers to eradicate performance issues. It is an integrated procedure of setting goals, training, and rewarding accountable and honest instructors. During the appraisal, authorities assess the strengths and weaknesses of each teacher. The school system will able to identify areas in which a teacher is proficient. Therefore, it is essential to recognize teachers' actual capabilities and interests to be assigned correct duties as per their skills. 

Teacher appraisal is an effective tool that helps in improving performance in schools. The school authorities share performance assessment findings with teachers. Such feedback will allow them to focus on enhancing their strengths. Administrators can also suggest ideas and techniques through which teachers can overcome their limitations. With this in place, the tool can boost morale among instructors. An accountable teacher, for instance, will be recognized during the performance appraisal and be rewarded due to their excellent efforts and performance. It enhances motivation and confidence. Maximum awareness among instructors is the basic strategy that will improve school performance. The organization recognizes its efforts by offering high salaries, higher responsibilities, and awards. These methods will motivate them to perform best at teaching. 

Teacher appraisal recognizes instructors` efforts and attainments. When there is constant performance evaluation, teachers will learn to acquire new teaching techniques to assist them in individual and career development. The procedures and methods utilized in performance appraisal increase teachers’ confidence and inspire them to be honest and accountable while teaching. During performance evaluation, school authorities help teachers suggest techniques of improving their attitudes, behaviors, mental abilities, emotional intelligence, and many more. Due to career advancement, teachers will enjoy promotion and effective transfers to excellent schools (Davis & McDonald, 2019). When authorities find that a particular teacher is competent, honest, and accountable, such instructors will be offered promotion and transfer based on merit, proficiency, and experience rather than favoritism and seniority. 

Teacher appraisal also enables instructors to raise their concerns, requirements, and expectations to school administrators. It is also a great avenue where teachers can seek help from educational authorities to enhance personal performance. In short, the procedures provide a platform to improve teacher-management communication, which will boost school performance. When there are issues realized during the appraisal, the management can recruit an extra workforce based on the quality and quantity assessment. 

Cons 

Teacher appraisal is time-consuming. Every school authority is liable for the preparation of performance evaluation for each teacher. They need to complete the appraisal form for each teacher and note the strengths, accomplishments, weaknesses, and other observations during appraisal. The model has numerous processes, which makes it difficult for many supervisors. Sometimes, the process is done by inexperienced evaluators. The model required skilled and trained assessors. When unskilled people perform the process, it will add no value to teachers because there will be no accountability or integrity. 

Additionally, the model is subject to individual bias and defecting ratings. Numerous school administrators avoid giving negative comments or low ratings to teachers. Therefore, ineffective feedback will be given. School authorities try to prevent possible disputes or complaints among teachers. Additionally, there are fears of a lack of cooperation from teachers in the future. This leads to evaluators giving positive ratings so that the connections are not destroyed. Sometimes, they provide a low rating for hardworking teachers due to jealousy that such instructors might replace them. 

Teacher performance appraisal is also subject to the horn and halo effect. This error refers to a personal tendency to view only the positive or the negative side of an individual. For instance, evaluators might assume a teacher is ever late and will rate such a person low in all areas because of one assumption. Such evaluation might hinder the evaluators from failing in checking that the teacher might be working for a long period each day and finishes the responsibilities on time. This error affects teachers` general ratings. 

Lastly, human behaviors and attitudes can lead to poor performance appraisal. Sometimes, assessors can evaluate an employee's performance, high or low, based on previous performances rather than present ones. Also, if the evaluators have high expectations, they might rate a teacher lower. Therefore, it makes the teacher look lower than other teachers on average. This problem makes the process of evaluation and enhancing performance in school hard task to achieve. 

Conclusion 

Teacher appraisal serves two primary purposes: promoting integrity and accountability in schools, which is the cornerstone of each educational system and improvement, such as personal development and school ability to meet student objectives. A high-quality appraisal system maintains a delicate balance between accountability needs and improvement dedication. The actual practices rely on the school culture, which leads to understanding and experiences, and these aspects will boost professional accountability and integrity instead of technical compliance, such as stipulated guidelines that need to be followed daily. 

Implications 

In recent years, teacher appraisal has been developed to offer a more integrated and constant management performance technique. It replaced the traditional and isolated merit rating. The critical factor in teacher appraisal is the feedback that allows teachers to know what is precisely expected from them. Therefore, the methods could be optimized to realize performance by setting goals and giving them the morale to be productive in teaching. Rewards, training, and professional development have been demonstrated to increase teacher productivity. These strategies encourage staff to be creative. 

Teacher performance appraisal assists instructors in working efficiently. Schools can increase their performance by developing evaluation techniques and utilizing them constantly to provide constructive feedback and offer competitive rewards. The vital aspect is to hold teacher performance and make it part of the school culture. Instructors should have a voice in the assessment and offer their feedback to the school administration as part of the procedure. Utilizing suggestions and insight from teachers can assist schools in creating more effective learning and teaching culture. 

The evaluation tool helps create a meaningful conversation between school management and teachers that could not have happened before. Many schools are fast-paced, so school authorities may not regularly offer helpful feedback to teachers. Also, teachers may not have a chance to raise problems they are dealing with within the school. Teacher performance appraisal is a dedication to creating time for these forms of dialogue that will benefit students, teachers, and the school organization. 

References 

Cochran-Smith, M. et al. (2018).  Reclaiming accountability in teacher education . Teachers College Press. 

Cochran-Smith, M., et al. (2017). The accountability era in US teacher education: Looking back, looking forward.  European Journal of Teacher Education ,  40 (5), 572-588.  https://doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2017.1385061 

Davis, A., & McDonald, D. (2019). Teachers’ reflections of instructional effectiveness: Self-assessment through a standards-based appraisal process.  Reflective Practice ,  20 (1), 125-141.  https://doi.org/10.1080/14623943.2019.1569508 

Gunawan, I., et al. (2020). Identification of themes in the moral debate program as an effort to increase work integrity of principal.  Proceedings of the 2nd Early Childhood and Primary Childhood Education (ECPE 2020) .  https://doi.org/10.2991/assehr.k.201112.005 

Zhang, X., & Ng, H. (2016). An effective model of teacher appraisal.  Educational Management Administration & Leadership ,  45 (2), 196-218.  https://doi.org/10.1177/1741143215597234