Creating state accountability systems that help schools improve 

The nation can establish a system of educational accountability that helps lift the performance of every learner, teacher, leader, and community. But this will only happen if states choose to shed approaches common to the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) era that created a compliance culture of blame and an inequitable system of winners and losers.  

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) provides an unprecedented opportunity for states to create a new framework for accountability that has continuous improvement at its core and local context as its foundation. Unlike NCLB, ESSA focuses more on improvement than punishment. It empowers policy makers to look critically at all aspects of school that influence learning. ESSA requires reporting to the public on outcomes and opportunities to learn for all students, including per-pupil expenditures, access to rigorous coursework, and measures of school climate. The law returns power to the states to determine what accountability should look like. Each state must establish its own statewide accountability system and related school support and improvement activities by the 2017-18 school year. Because ESSA offers states flexibility without imposing set structures, absent deliberate and intentional action, we still could wind up where we began: overemphasizing test scores and choosing indicators based on what is easiest to measure.