Accountability

Accountability Resources

The Center for Assessment partners with education leaders to design, refine, and evaluate accountability systems that balance equity, transparency, and technical rigor. Grounded in research and best practices, our work ensures these systems address local priorities while meeting high standards for validity and utility. We provide thought leadership on reimagining accountability frameworks to better support educational equity, improve outcomes, and enhance stakeholder trust. Whether building new systems or optimizing existing ones, we collaborate to create solutions that drive meaningful, sustainable improvements in schools and student learning.


Recent Accountability Projects

Accountability Documentation

The New Mexico Public Education Department is developing technical documentation of the state’s accountability system. The goal of this work is to increase transparency and ensure year-to-year consistency in implementation of the accountability business rules.

Setting Accountability Performance Standards

The Arkansas Department of Education is designing a process to establish new standards for the state’s school accountability system. It will consider a school’s performance across multiple prioritized measures and allow grades to be reported for overall school performance and for two or more priority indicators.

Modeling Growth In Delaware

In state accountability systems, it is important that each indicator provide valuable and independent information about schools. A team from the Center—Senior Associates Will Lorié and Damian Betebenner and Executive Director Scott Marion—is working with a Delaware advisory group to investigate ways to model student academic growth.


Recent Accountability Blog Posts

Recovery, Stabilization, or Continued Decline as We Emerge from the Pandemic

Assessment results in 2022 can tell us a lot about where learning stands, but only if presented correctly for accurate comparisons.
August 16, 2022

Using Multiple Achievement Measures to Understand the Effects of COVID-19 on Student Learning

This paper describes a set of studies conducted to help understand the effects of pandemic-related disruptions on students’ academic performance […]
August 9, 2022

Assessment and Accountability to Monitor and Support Learning Recovery

The 2022 Reidy Interactive Lecture Series will focus on learning recovery post-COVID and the role of assessment and accountability.
July 27, 2022

Boosting the Signal Through the Noise

Learnings from our Colloquium: effective communication about educational assessment and accountability in a time of confusion and mistrust.
June 8, 2022

Lead With the Reports

What I Learned About Creating Effective Test Score Reports From the Great Ron Hambleton  Sadly, one of the giants in […]
May 11, 2022

2022 Summer Internships: Improving Educational Assessment and Accountability

After two productive but virtual summers, we are looking forward to working side-by-side with our new group of summer interns […]
May 4, 2022

What’s in a Name? Sometimes, Quite a Bit

Considering the Effects of COVID-19 Disruptions on Identifying Schools for Supports Under ESSA Following a two-year hiatus, states must restart […]
April 13, 2022

Addressing the Problem With Problems (Part 2)

How Can Education Agencies Construct Clear and Well-Defined Problem Statements? In Part 1 we addressed the problem with trying to […]
April 7, 2022

The Operational Best Practices for Accountability

The Operational Best Practices for Accountability are intended to provide states with guidance and criteria for the design, development, implementation, […]
April 6, 2022

Addressing the Problem With Problems (Part 1)

Searching for Solutions to the Challenges of Education Policy and Practice ​ As H.L. Mencken stated, “For every complex problem […]
April 6, 2022
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