Chicago's businessmen propose six recommendations related to evaluation, research, administration, curriculum planning, and career education to establish accountability and improve the quality of Chicago Public Schools. (DW)

Suggests ground rules for legitimizing alternatives within the public system and argues for options as a feasible route to reform. (Author)

Rebuts proposals for educational reform advanced in the same issue by Robert L. Ebel. Accuses Ebel of offering insufficient evidence for his claims, of relying upon the indicators of productivity as if they were the means to increase productivity, and of failing to place responsibility for learning on the student. (Author/WD)

Presents a plan to begin the elimination of illiteracy: each family with a child who fails to achieve literacy in the public schools for three years in a row would be given the option of sending the child to the private school of their choice at taxpayer expense. (Author/WD)

Describes Nebraska's School-based Teacher-led Assessment and Reporting System (STARS), a criterion-referenced assessment system that measures school and district performance over time. (PP)

Challenges theory that high-stakes testing and accountability will improve student performance. Cites experience in New York and Boston where student test failure and dropouts have increased. Discusses success of Danish education reform efforts. (PKP)

Discusses issues defining the boundaries of the current accountability debate, focusing on the historical struggle between the ideas of philosopher John Dewey and psychologist Edward Thorndike. In the Thorndike camp, corporate America wants educators to continue to sort, select, and label children, aided by standardized testing. The…

Congress should formulate U.S. testing policy to ensure that reliable and accurate data are available to policymakers, educators, and the public and that tests are used fairly without infringing on individual rights or imposing unacceptable social costs. Appropriate test use and continued research funding must be a high priority for agencies…

Mandated, standardized national testing is being discussed as a means of improving education by holding schools accountable. Making schools genuinely accountable means involving teachers in developing assessment methods that measure what students know and can do. This approach ties assessment to instruction, improvement of practice, and the…

Compares state policies with accountability provisions of the newly reauthorized Elementary and Secondary Education Act. (PKP)

Many of us have an intuitive understanding of physics that works surprisingly well to guide everyday action, but we would not attempt to send a rocket to the moon with it. Unfortunately, the authors argue, our policy makers are not as cautious when it comes to basing our school accountability system on intuitive test theory. Intuitive physics…

Heretical as it may seem in today's environment, the federal government should have a limited, though crucial, role in increasing the academic achievement of students. All the wrappings conceal the root issue in American public education. For example, the current criticism of the Bush Administration budgets for failing to match the funding…

In the popular imagination, Americans are a child-loving people. Across the land, selfless parents take classes, read books, create playgroups, and exchange the latest information about how to ensure safe, contented, and productive childhoods. The range of public programs and policies benefiting children, directly or indirectly, offers further…

Test-based accountability systems aim to direct the behavior of educators toward the improvement of student achievement. The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act codified accountability as the national educational blueprint, requiring schools to increase test scores incrementally so that all students are proficient in reading and math by 2014. Yet,…