The number one quality business leaders look for in employees is creativity and yet the U.S. education system undermines the development of the higher-order skills that promote creativity by its dogged focus on multiple-choice tests. Stephan Turnipseed and Linda DarlingHammond discuss the kind of rich accountability system that will help students…

The media and observers across the ideological spectrum were surprised and, in some cases, disconcerted in July 2014, when at the annual American Federation of Teachers (AFT) convention in Los Angeles, the union's leadership team announced that its Innovation Fund grants of $20,000 to $30,000 were going to be made available to state and local…

This paper attempts to present a critique of the concept and meaning of the term social accountability at university level from a critical point of view. The main objective is to analyze and re-build the term accountability in order to contextualize it for public universities. First, we present the importance of the idea of accountability in…

In this commentary, the author states that, as the contributions of the focal articles make clear, there is much to learn about how value-added models (VAMs) are actually used in a variety of settings. Indeed, it is important to remember that VAM scores are but one component of a complex evaluation system that can play out differently in different…

What is the potential of cross-border accreditation? Will universities go for a first or second opinion abroad? Will foreign reviews replace national assessments? What motivates universities and agencies for this extra work? What about understanding local context? Governments across the globe consider higher education a national public good. State…

China's rising economy has increased the popularity of learning the Chinese language. Chinese immersion programs have gained popularity in K-12 education, particularly for younger learners. However, research on the optimal instruction design for Chinese and English biliteracy development in one-way Chinese immersion programs is scarce. This…

In recent decades, the governance of educational systems has experienced dramatic changes in many countries. Schools have been given more autonomy whilst being held increasingly accountable at the central level through standardized testing and other forms of external evaluation. The mechanisms of performance-based accountability (PBA) and the…

Indigenous communities and students have been marginalized by colonial practices, disproportionally referred to special education programs, and encounter systematic prejudice and discrimination in education systems that lack respect for their ways of knowing and being. To disrupt hierarchical practices and structures that enact a hidden curriculum…

High-quality career and technical education (CTE) programs represent an effective way to provide young adults with an educational experience that prepares them for both college and career success. But not all CTE programs provide accessible pathways to a bounty of educational options without dead ends. To address the false dichotomy--college…

This brief examines the impact of using a system based on multiple metrics that requires institutions to pass three out of four thresholds for student loan default, student loan repayment, program completion, and postcollege earnings. Currently, a very high loan default rate is the only student outcome that disqualifies institutions from the…

School ratings are a ubiquitous feature of the U.S. educational system. Alongside state-mandated measures of school performance, non-state organizations such as GreatSchools.org and Niche have created consumer-oriented systems of school ratings that draw on publicly available information about schools. Claiming the purpose of their rating systems…

This document includes the "FY 2022 Annual Performance Report" and "FY 2024 Annual Performance Plan." The "FY 2022 Annual Performance Report" provides narrative and data on the US Department of Education's progress toward the strategic goals and objectives outlined in its "Fiscal Years 2022-2026 Strategic…

This column is a review of three areas of interest to Texas ELAR educators: the ELAR/SLAR TEKS revision, recent news from the Texas Education Agency, and the status of several bills relating to assessment. Included is a summary of the past two years of the ELAR/SLAR TEKS revision process and information about next steps in that process.

The notion of schools as "loosely coupled" organizations has been widely discussed in the research literature. Many argue it is either a protective mechanism for schools to buffer external pressure or a barrier for implementing new reforms. Against the backdrop of systemic change and accountability, we applied a two-level hierarchical…

Over the past decade, one of the demands upon public institutions, among which we find universities, has been for transparency and improvement of accountability. In this context, Colombian universities are introducing different methods of management and governance aimed at addressing the demands of society generally in relation to transparency and…