Most states have experimented with performance accountability as a way to drive improvement in public higher education institutions and systems. However, efforts to implement performance funding in the United States have yielded mixed results. This policy brief describes the reforms that dramatically changed the policy landscape in England and explains the performance funding and regulatory control system that have driven improvement in this new landscape. It utilizes five years of cross-sectional, student-level data (1998-99 to 2002-03) from the Individualized Learner Record, a data set maintained by the Learning & Skills Council. The author received access to this data through former employment at the Social Disadvantage Research Centre at Oxford University, which has a data-sharing agreement with the Learning & Skills Council. (Contains 4 tables, 1 figure, and 13 end notes.)