Despite being regarded as the great equalizer, public education's close ties with the market economy have made it the great perpetuator. High school teacher Jonathan Lancaster writes that public education has become a structure in which students become career ready, as opposed to world ready. Therefore, educators should shift the narrative away…

Rudy Ruiz and Faith Connolly propose a new accountability measure that captures the percentage of students in a school that have a teacher of a similar ethno-racial background. The measure would hold school districts accountable for the percentage of students who have a teacher who looks like them. Adding this measure would bring attention to…

Parents and the public use accountability data to judge if schools are doing a good or a bad job educating their students. However, using the current data, schools perceived as "good" tend to be in better-resourced districts and enroll higher percentages of wealthy and white students. Schools perceived as "bad" tend to be in…

Shifts in the education system to more student-centered learning will require state and local education agencies to rethink how they do their work. Current accountability systems focus on compliance with standards, as demonstrated in annual summative assessments. Mark Elgart explains that a new approach to accountability will offer more authentic…

Schools across the United States use abeyance agreements as an alternative to suspension or expulsion, yet little is known about them. These agreements allow students to avoid or reduce suspensions or expulsions, if they meet the terms of the agreement and waive certain due process rights. David Perrodin argues that these agreements enable school…

As more K-12 school districts have hired equity officers, questions have arisen about their role and effectiveness. A recent Heritage Foundation report, for example, found that schools with equity officers have the lowest achievement outcomes. Mary Rice-Boothe and Tanji Reed Marshall point out, however, that student achievement is not the only…

The English learner (EL) population has grown by 35% in the last 20 years. However, in addition to new students being identified as ELs, the EL subgroup is being inflated by students who are not being reclassified within a reasonable and developmentally appropriate timeframe. These students, often labeled long term ELs (LTELs), are a product of…

In 2019, Drew H. Gitomer, Dan Battey, and José Felipe Martínez published a paper detailing apparent violations of fundamental principles and norms in the reporting of technical information about the edTPA, a widely used high-stakes assessment for teacher licensure. In this article, they describe and criticize the lack of appropriate response to…

Results-based school accountability has been the linchpin of education reform in the United States for at least two decades. But the COVID-19 pandemic led many schools, states, and districts to put their testing and accountability programs on hold. Chester E. Finn, Jr., argues that it is time for the accountability holiday to end and makes…

Using narrow test scores as the only means of accountability does not serve students, teachers, or schools. Jonathan E. Collins writes that policy makers and educators should consider accountability as an education system designed to be accountable to the best version of students. This means assessing outcomes that policy makers too easily…

No Child Left Behind and the Every Student Succeeds Act have made accountability central to conversations about education policy. But neither statute articulates a clear vision of what constitutes "quality" or "equity" in education, nor do they include a mechanism to ensure that schools have sufficient resources to pursue that…

The COVID-19 pandemic heightened tensions around standardized testing policy and prompted the United States Department of Education to allow states to request waivers from federal standardized testing requirements. Paul Bruno and Dan Goldhaber describe the waivers that states requested and received, what they suggest about how state test results…

As his district's director of equity and strategic engagement, Shomari Jones often hears the stories of the racism Black students and their families experience in schools. As a Black man representing a culturally white district, he is continually reminded of how the suffering of the past has persisted into the present. Jones and Paul Sutton…

As states consider non-academic measures of school quality for their accountability plans under the Every Student Succeeds Act, few are choosing to focus on the school climate in which students learn. That's not a surprise, given concerns about the validity and usefulness of existing climate surveys. However, the authors argue, a recent study…

Many proponents of charter schools suggest that, by providing an option outside traditional public schools, they are helping disadvantaged students who might otherwise be confined to low-quality neighborhood schools. But market-based accountability structures are insufficient to ensure that charter schools are actually enrolling students (i.e.,…