How Can School Accountability Reflect the Purposes of Education?
To decide what accountability systems should measure, we must articulate the purposes of schooling. Then we can build systems that reflect them.
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Latest Posts
Reclaiming Accountability: From Labels to Learning
Accountability identifies schools that need support, but it must do better to help educators understand the problem and what to do next.
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Evaluating the Impact of Statewide School Accountability Systems
Are school accountability systems working as intended? As the U.S. Education Department offers states flexibility, it’s time to examine the evidence.
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Accountability System Design Tensions
Why we keep adding measures to our school accountability systems and how we can harness the idea of subtraction to streamline them.
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Moving Education From Accountability to Shared Responsibility
Shifting from an accountability mindset to reciprocal responsibility could transform the way schools, districts and states work toward improvement.
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You Can Get the Accountability System You Want (Part 2)
States complain that ESSA bars them from getting the accountability systems they really want. We present three examples of systems that show otherwise.
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You Can Get the Accountability System You Want (Part 1)
States can have the school accountability systems they value by minimizing the footprint of the Every Student Succeeds Act.
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Does School Accountability Have to Be So Complicated?
We can build simpler systems. The trick is striking the right balance between complexity and simplicity.
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How to Improve School Accountability Now
We don’t refute calls for more sweeping reform, but we must take swift action to make school accountability work better right now.
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Through-Year Assessment: A Radical Renegotiation of the School Accountability ContractÂ
Many states are considering replacing their year-end tests with through-year assessments. But this change would impact states’ implicit accountability contracts with schools.
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Guidance for Addressing N-Size in School Accountability and Reporting Systems
Decisions regarding the minimum n-size for accountability indicators can make a big difference in the design and implementation of school accountability systems.
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Supporting A Principled Approach to Restarting School Accountability in Spring 2022
Operational Best Practices for Accountability Recently, my colleague Chris Domaleski reminded us of the complexity associated with restarting school accountability in Spring 2022. It is unlikely that this problem will […]
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Accountability Doesn’t Need to Be Restarted. It Needs to Be Revised!
Making the Case for a New Approach to Federal School Accountability The U.S. Department of Education followed an all too familiar pattern of publishing important guidance just before the Christmas […]
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Addressing the Accountability Challenge of Missing Data With A Performance Profile
Consider a Different Way to Put The Pieces Together In a previous post I discussed the challenges of rebuilding accountability systems developed for the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) in 2021-2022. Prominent […]
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Educating Pablo: A Play About Through Course Assessment Systems
Dissecting the Conundrum of Testing Throughout the Year or Once at the End in a Conversation Between Teacher and Student Various states have advanced through course assessment proposals, in which […]
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Rethinking School Accountability for the 2020-2021 School Year
State and district leaders are working hard to prepare for in-person schooling in 2020-2021 while also planning for hybrid models or, at worst, full remote learning should certain locales become […]
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The Next Generation of State Assessment and Accountability
Part 3: Changes to the Current Accountability Model That May Fundamentally Reshape Educational Assessment and Accountability This is the final installment in a three-part series on the future of large-scale […]
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Sizing Up the Next Generation of Large-Scale State Assessment and Accountability
Part 2: The Role of Education Theory, Public Support, and Political Policy in Shaping the Next Dominant Pattern in State Assessment and Accountability This is the second in a three-part […]
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