This article reports on why states are quitting the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC). The two consortia sought to develop state-of-the-art assessments that focused on problem solving and the application of knowledge, and that moved away from former tests'…

When congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), standardized testing in public schools became the law of the land. The ambitious legislation identified test-based accountability as the key to improving schools and, by extension, the long-term prospects of American schoolchildren. Thirteen years later, the debate over the federal…

Since the first charter school opened 20 years ago in Minnesota, charters have been a focus of school reform advocates and the subject of substantial research. Yet the regulators of the charter industry (called "authorizers" or "sponsors") remain a mystery to many. In fact, many authorizers work in isolation, developing their…