Who We Are

Vision

American public education has evolved over the last century from a collection of largely autonomous local school systems to an increasingly centralized education system where expectations, funding and governance are shared by local, state, and federal policymakers. The state and federal role in education has expanded in the wake of rising educational expectations in the workplace, the nation's commitment to civil rights, and mounting evidence that many local school systems lacked the resources and the commitment to respond sufficiently to either the workforce or the equity agendas. Education Sector believes that holding educators accountable for their students' performance is important to ensuring that all students, especially those who public schools have traditionally neglected, are taught to high standards.

In recent years, educational accountability has been synonymous with the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Education Sector supports NCLB's goals of high expectations for all students, public evaluation of educators' performance, and strong action to help students in schools and districts where performance consistently falls short. But NCLB's accountability system has significant shortcomings. We will work to address them. And we think it is important to begin work on a new generation of educational accountability, one that more fully and fairly measures the depth and breadth of students' educational experiences.

Rationale

NCLB has focused unprecedented and overdue attention on the need to reform persistently dysfunctional school systems and help traditionally underserved students. But it has a number of key shortcomings. It doesn't gather enough accurate information about the breadth of knowledge and skills students need to learn. Nor does it provide enough differentiation between schools that need to solve different kinds of problems for different kinds of students. It does not give enough support to the schools in most need of resources and reform. And it is not well-integrated with other sources of accountability, including market forces, parental choice, governance, and expert judgment. As a result, NCLB lacks the support of many of the educators whose work determines the success or failure of American schools. Successful accountability systems require the investment of students, educators, policymakers, parents, and the public alike.

Strategy

Education Sector has both short-term and long-term strategies for improving accountability in elementary and secondary education. We will continue to participate in policy debates about the best ways to strengthen NCLB, and we will make recommendations about NCLB to Congress when lawmakers reauthorize the law.

At the same time, we plan to begin work on the next generation of educational accountability. We'll undertake a broad reassessment of the basic questions at the heart of educational accountability: What are the goals of accountability? Who should be held accountable? How should they be held accountable? With the help of a wide range of experts and stakeholders, we’ll look beyond the existing accountability paradigm, casting a wide net for new methods and models of accountability at a time when traditional ways of educating students are themselves under reconsideration.

Impact

Education Sector will work to improve the depth and quality of the national conversation about elementary and secondary education accountability. We'll promote specific changes in federal and state policies that increase the effectiveness and fairness of NCLB and state accountability systems. And we’ll promote new, more effective ways of using accountability to strengthen the nation's education system.