In the course of the conversations this week on affiliated building companies, a number of folks have focused on an argument that the creation of affiliated building companies and the practices referenced in the Star Tribune article were legal - therefore there is built-in accountability.
Sometime over the last few decades, the idea has crept in to the American mentality that all one has to think about is whether something is legal and your accountability is covered. There are probably a lot of reasons for this becoming a widespread thought process - but that is for another forum.
Accountability, however, is encompasses a much broader scope than whether or not something is legal.
There are different types of accountability all of which are interconnected. In their book, Public Service Accountability: A Comparative Perspective, Bruce Stone, O.P. Dwivedi, and Joseph G. Jabbra outline 8 types of accountability, namely: moral, administrative, political, managerial, market, legal/judicial, constituency relation, and professional.
Charter schools are public service enterprises - so the legality of something is not a sufficient measure of accountability. Public education is accountable to more than the law.
In the United States the law is the minimum expectation, not the ideal as it is in some other countries and cultures - so being legally accountable is in some ways the lowest level of accountability.
Whether one likes it or not, or thinks it should not be so (and there are those who have a worldview that politics should play no role in education), there is and always will be political accountability in public education.
Political accountability goes way beyond legal requirements because politics is about ideals, values, policy and - often times more important than any of those things - public perception and sentiment.
So to respond that something was legal when the issue is about political accountability misses not only the boat, but misses the reality of the world in which public education and public charter schools operate.