Under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), federal education mandates will be decreasing, which means states will have more flexibility and authority than they've had in decades. State education agency (SEA) leaders are confronting great change and great opportunity as many agencies move away from a focus on compliance with federal regulations,…

Today's accountability paradigm has led many teachers to take on too much work in the push to raise test scores. Teachers don't need to do more; rather, they need to approach instruction differently. To improve results, teachers must require that students assume more responsibility for their own learning. Three key ways in which students and…

The authors' experiences with improvement efforts, particularly those which failed to be fully implemented, cause them to wonder if other approaches to improvement will increase their potential for success. They conclude that principles--powerful beliefs that underlie actions--are essential to sustained system and school improvement. Over the…

Given the primary role of teachers in affecting student achievement, U.S. policy makers and reformers have increasingly focused on monitoring and evaluating teacher effectiveness by emphasizing the links to student learning outcomes. Large-scale international assessments are frequently used as base examples to justify reform. But, relatively…

Reformers hope that by unbundling schools--taking apart the current structures and routines and putting them together in new ways--we can create better schools. But there is no guarantee that it would improve schools in three areas that we know matter: coherence and infrastructure, the instructional core, and political accountability. However,…

Principals can play a pivotal role in the improvement of student learning by helping teachers develop and use sound classroom assessments that will strengthen instruction and student learning. The typical teacher will spend a quarter to a third of her or his available professional time involved in assessment-related activities. If they do it well,…

Miami-Dade County Public Schools invested in an intensive, three-year program to improve the learning of students in its 39 lowest-performing schools. Known as the Zone, these schools experienced mixed success, with elementary schools reducing the gap between various groups of students while middle and high schools were less successful. However,…

"Training" certainly fit the factory model of education. To others, the word conjured images of what one does to animals, getting them to sit, roll over, and play dead. Few educators now describe their learning experiences as training. The word "development" may be an improvement, but just a small one. It evokes images of what someone does to…

Nothing is more important to America's future than teaching children the skills they need to be successful. Every child must receive a quality education if America is to be a prosperous and hopeful country. The rapidly changing global economy is creating new industries that compete for highly skilled workers from around the world, and young people…

Teachers and principals don't always agree about the effects on education of accountability systems based on high-stakes testing. Mr. Jones and Mr. Egley look at the implications of these differing perceptions and suggest some strategies for creating a climate in which teachers and administrators can move forward on improving student learning.…

Believing that educational reforms are overdue, the author proposes three radical solutions: only validated instructional programs should be implemented, results of systematic public assessments of pupil achievements in learning should be published annually, and teachers should periodically submit evidence of learning achievement in their classes.…

The federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 (the latest revision of ESEA) has exerted strong pressure on the states to encourage local public schools to improve their standardized test scores. This emphasis reflects a desire on the part of politicians and policy makers for strict accountability in the form of current test scores that can…

In this article, the author offers a new vision of assessment that has the potential of bringing about remarkable gains in student achievement. The time has come to take advantage of the new understanding of the potential of assessment and to fundamentally rethink the relationship between assessment practices and effective schools in the United…

This article asserts that the health of public schools depends on defining a new model of accountability--one that is balanced and comprehensive. This new model needs be one that involves much more than test scores. This article outlines the premises behind this argument asking for what, to whom, and by what means schools should be held…