Time: 2:00 PM - 3:30 PM
Location: National Conference on Student Assessment (NCSA) Atlanta, Georgia
Description: The field of education policy has typically understood "accountability" to mean formal consequences for schools based on the results of student assessments. But in other fields, accountability is understood more broadly, to include process-based measures as well as mechanisms that are not based on measurement, such as political accountability and market-based accountability. We will discuss three projects that collectively expand the definition of accountability in education policy: examining Maryland's pioneering use of school-climate surveys in its ESSA accountability system; exploring how the District of Columbia increases schools' accountability to parents through evidence-based design of its school report cards; and describing the long-term impacts of the wide-ranging changes in political and market-based accountability initiated in 2007 in DC. The findings from these projects should be of interest to state and district policymakers across the country who seek to create robust systems of accountability and performance measurement.
