Improving educational quality: how best to evaluate our schools

Abstract

It is difficult to be against accountability for public schools. Schools are creatures of state and local government, with all the associated expectations of performance and oversight. The importance of education for individuals and for society is unassailable. But many believe that U.S. schools are not contributing as much as they could and are not competitive in comparisons with those of other countries. Thus, the desire to hold schools responsible for outcomes is natural. The disagreement comes, however, soon after people acknowledge the importance of school accountability. How should performance be assessed? Is providing information on student outcomes sufficient to get improvement? Should there be explicit sanctions and rewards for students and/or schools? Do unintended consequences overwhelm the intended consequences? This paper considers some of the basic features of school accountability systems and assesses both the incentives for change that are imbedded in these systems and the existing evidence we have about behavior under different systems. The essential features that we consider are focus, scope of measurement, design, and incentives. “Focus ” describes the mix of factors examined within accountability systems. “Scope ” considers the extent to which the accountability system captures the full range of school activities for each of the factors under review. “Design ” refers to the specific approaches to measuring the schools’

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