A Recipe for Effective School Accountability

Results-based school accountability has been the linchpin of education reform in the United States for the last two decades—and it’s done much good. But as accountability holidays caused by Covid end, many states and districts are rethinking how to comply with federal accountability requirements.

School accountability has traditionally been seen as having three parts: Academic standards, assessments of student performance (mostly using standardized tests), and consequences for schools whose students fail or meet them. 

Today, most experts recognize that a fourth part needs to be added: attention to the capacity of schools, districts, and states to fix their shortcomings and up their game. It doesn’t help kids just to ding their school for its failures if nobody at that school has the capacity to make it better.   

Fixing—or closing and replacing—troubled schools is really hard. Going forward, policy leaders should take into account whether their schools (and districts and states) possess the human, fiscal, political abilities—and the will—to fix the shortcomings identified by student assessments.

Whatever remedies are chosen, tomorrow’s education and government leaders should recommit to results-based school accountability adapted to the post-pandemic era and strengthened by a focus on the system’s capacity to engage in necessary reforms.