How State Board Leaders Can Build Next-Generation Accountability

For over a decade, state policymakers and education leaders have been largely working from the policy priorities established by the past two reauthorizations of federal education law, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. But increasingly, the push for clear measures of accountability and school improvement that the federal government articulated in 2002 in No Child Left Behind is in the rear view, as is much of the focus on state implementation of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), handed down in 2015. Some states have welcomed the recent pause in federal-level education policymaking. Others have continued to build from the minimum foundational requirements for federal accountability. But board members in all states, and in particular states whose systems have remained unchanged since ESSA, have a chance to think anew about responsibility, transparency, and data.

As they do, a set of splintered, disconnected ideas for improving schools will continue to drive conversations about state education policy:

• growing political tensions over what is taught in classrooms coupled with an expansion of choice options in many states, which are fragmenting long-standing systems;[1]
• efforts to deal with severe student attendance and engagement issues that were preexisting but exacerbated by COVID-era school closures;[2]
• conflicting policies related to technology, with a proliferation of device bans and restrictions alongside hurried efforts to integrate generative AI into students’ and teachers’ work;
• a significant focus on postsecondary programming and workforce outcomes that fails to connect to the K-12 policies that have outsized impact on these outcomes; and
• a new round of state waivers from federal policy stipulations amid stagnant or declining student achievement.

Given this context, states need to craft clear, sensible accountability systems more than ever before: targeting interventions and supports to the schools and districts most in need and holding themselves accountable for the fiscal and technical support they owe districts.

For all the problems that No Child Left Behind’s accountability provisions created, the law did focus the attention of state boards, state and local agency leaders, and state executives on their accountability systems (see box 1), and there is no denying the steady increases states saw in student performance and attainment during this era. Even without clear federal directives, state board members can return to the core concept of data-driven accountability, learning lessons from the past and broadening their aperture to address the most pressing issues from a more coherent perspective.

Leading States

The “Mississippi Miracle” captured policymakers’ attention primarily for the boost in fourth grade reading scores that the state’s decade-long initiative produced. While it offers an approach to teaching children to read that couples key instructional elements, quality curriculum, and aligned teacher training, accountability played a central role as well.[5] Fourth-grade gate assessment and the possibility of grade retention were coupled with intensive intervention, an essential—and controversial—element of the state’s design. Indeed, research is showing that grade retention policies in Mississippi and elsewhere confer real benefits on student performance, though its impact is most strongly realized in combination with other interventions like teacher training and literacy coaches.[6] Rather than focusing on outcomes alone, Mississippi state leaders invested in local capacity through quality curriculum materials and professional learning, providing the resources that districts needed to move the needle on student performance.

Mississippi is far from the only state that has been purposeful in its use of data and has thought deeply about how robust accountability fits into school improvement efforts. Results for America’s Evidence in Education Lab identified 162 promising practices for building and using evidence to improve student outcomes that states have embedded in their ESSA plans.[7] This review found

• seven states that eschew a traditional compliance approach in favor of a focus on regular data feedback cycles that connect identified challenges to evidence-based school improvement interventions;[8]
• eight states that described strong monitoring and evaluation processes for the implementation of school improvement plans;[9] and
• seven states with clear plans for how the state would provide technical assistance for choosing evidence-based interventions to support schools identified for improvement.[10]

Of course, good policies are often necessary but not always sufficient for positive outcomes; states that have adopted these innovative policies have not immediately transformed into national leaders when it comes to student outcomes. But all these examples show ways state policymakers can think expansively about what accountability looks like, what data it requires, and what policy supports make it successful over time.

Lessons to Drive a Fresh Look

Despite much effort and discussion over the years, many states have yet to sufficiently connect their processes for identifying schools needing improvement with adequate support, research suggests.[11] Here are four considerations for state board members that draw on what we have learned:

Not All Useful Data Belongs in an Accountability System. Data about students’ experiences and outcomes serves many purposes for many people. Data is a fixture of systemwide transparency, local service provision, and real-time instructional changes in a classroom. A state board member may look at statewide reading assessment scores to inform decisions about K-12 academic standards and teacher licensing requirements. A local nonprofit could analyze college-going rates across the state and publish a public dashboard with their findings. A high school principal could use school climate surveys to identify and help address bullying.

Much of the data that states and districts collect and report supports a sort of “public accountability” that operates under a different theory of change than the more consequential forms of state accountability required under ESSA. Public accountability gets at the idea that schools should serve families and communities, who deserve a window into how school systems are performing. Parents or others could use that visibility, in principle, to push for improvement—as when parents in Los Angeles forced the state to include growth data on school report cards[12]—or “vote with their feet.” In states with ever-expanding school choice policies, that can translate into light on school requirements or transparency. These uses of data can be powerful, though we would argue that meaningful consequences and supports from the state are much more likely to drive improvement than a public-only approach to accountability.

State report cards are one example of a data tool that is federally required but not actually part of identifying or improving schools under state accountability plans.[13] The federal requirement to publish these school report cards acknowledges that some information should be public facing and available for purposes other than traditional accountability. Among other uses, publicly available data, such as those on state report cards, provides transparency on more subjective indicators of student performance like course grades. Without comparable data like this, grade inflation and an honesty gap ensue, where parents and students must parse a stark disparity between good grades and poor assessment results.[14]

But just because a measure is useful for public accountability or to inform practice in real time does not mean that piece of data belongs in a statewide accountability system. The Center for Assessment’s executive director, Chris Domaleski, warns against conflating improvement and monitoring functions:

Consider this question: Is a school accountability system expected to function as an intervention that directly drives improvement? Some argue that unless the answer is yes, the system is incomplete. Others see accountability primarily as a monitoring tool that is closely connected to school improvement, but not synonymous with it. Conflating these two views can actually diminish the effectiveness of both.[15]

Both monitoring and improvement can be part of an accountability system, but they are distinct functions requiring different data and different roles for state leaders. “Whether we imagine accountability as an intervention or as a monitoring tool, it’s essential that we’re clear about its intended purposes and uses when we discuss it,” Domaleski writes.

States need to make smarter use of the data that is being collected—that is, better targeting of the data to different audiences to enable the kinds of decisions they need to make. People can start to doubt the utility of data and accountability measures when everything the state can measure is thrown into a model and none of it is explicitly designed to move the needles a state is trying to move or coupled with the support they are prepared to provide to districts.

Here’s one example of a data and accountability disconnect: Ten states included military service as one of their measures of postsecondary success under ESSA. But while understanding military enrollment is useful for many stakeholders, a lack of comparable, readily available, high-quality data on students’ readiness and intent to serve has made it hard to hold K-12 schools accountable for preparing students to be successful after graduating.[16]

Another indicator that different stakeholders need different data: Sixteen states have separate state accountability systems that differ from their federally required systems, suggesting that perhaps policymakers in those states want data that is not in their federal accountability system to inform their school performance priorities.[17] In short, state members should remember that the data elements that are useful for the public, educators, families, and researchers are going to differ, but only some of it belongs in the statewide accountability system.

Accountability Is More Than Measurement. There is often an assumption—sometimes implicit—that accountability policy is fundamentally just about measuring and ranking school performance. Put the state’s schools in rank order on some metric, lop off the bottom 5 to 10 percent for intervention, and you have performed accountability. Sometimes, this view is teed up as a bit of a straw man to attack accountability policy—that it is all about imposing testing on students and not at all about helping schools get better. But it is also a reasonable critique of a policy regime that has often focused more on measurement and identification than on intervention and support.

Thus state board members should train their attention on how to move beyond a measurement-focused approach to thinking about how their state is working with struggling schools to improve. Getting measurement right is important, of course. What measures go into the system and how they are constructed and combined all matter. But it is that next step that is most essential—and the place where state board leaders are most needed. After all, it is very likely that schools and districts would improve if they knew the actions that would enable them to do so.

The state board role here can be varied, and the specific actions may depend on state context and organizational structure. A few areas where state board action may be most helpful to schools and districts are as follows:

• Provide local leaders with clear, accurate, comprehensive data and help them make sense of it. There is substantial local variability in capacity for understanding and using data, and the state is well positioned to fill those gaps.
• Define some reasonable set of evidence-informed interventions that can serve as a menu for districts and schools in need of improvement. Again, this takes the burden off local actors for sifting through often thin or conflicting lists of programs, and it also allows the state to construct a more coherent reform agenda for its districts to implement.
• Build in systematic efforts to evaluate school and district improvement efforts to guide further investment and help local leaders make course corrections and track impact—for example, by reserving state funds for proven evidence-based interventions and encouraging districts to set aside some state grant funds for monitoring and evaluation.

Ultimately, state board leaders should think of accountability systems as reciprocal rather than top down. Yes, local education agencies owe the state efforts to improve. But state leaders owe local actors the systems, tools, and resources they need to improve. This kind of reciprocity can foster trust and better working relationships between educators and state leaders.

State Leaders Should Get Smart on Assessment Uses, Growth Models, and Measures. Choose, understand, and communicate measures carefully. Related to the idea that not every piece of data belongs in an accountability system, not every type of assessment, growth model, or other measure may answer the pressing questions facing state leaders. As state board members consider the type of accountability system best for their state, they should consider how decisions about what to measure and how to measure it enable or complicate efforts to improve schools.

Assessments are rightly touted as the gold standard for producing representative, comparable data on student learning. But different assessments inform different decisions. While an interim assessment might help district leaders decide where to direct resources and programs, it does not help state leaders calculate progress toward state goals. Yet many states get stuck in a trap of assessment misuse—for example, thinking that the statewide summative assessment they use for accountability can also provide classroom teachers real-time feedback on individual students’ needs.

Leaders need to think about how the state can build—and support local districts to enforce—a balanced system of assessments that is minimally burdensome at the local level but still provides the data needed to make summative judgments.[18] State board members may find it useful to inventory the state and district assessments delivered to students in their state and check if each assessment matches its intended use and provides unique value. For example, are districts adopting assessments to inform teacher practice, but those assessments do not provide timely, student-level data to suit that purpose? Are state and district summative assessments providing duplicative information? Even if different districts have different curricula, do their assessments all reflect state standards?

In an effort to create a clearer picture of student learning that looks at more than just whether students are proficient at the math and reading skills expected for their grade, nearly all states have adopted a growth model that shows how much students are learning over time.[19] But as with assessments, there are different types of growth models, and each one answers different questions. For example, a value-added measure is intended to describe the impact of the school on student achievement, while a student growth percentile measure aims to calculate the average growth in student learning given students’ baseline performance, and a growth-to-standard measure looks at students’ progress toward grade-level learning goals. These are different purposes, and they should not be conflated. Whatever models leaders choose, they should clearly communicate their purpose to all stakeholders.

ESSA invited states to add measures that could broaden their understanding of school performance. But these measures may need to change as data availability changes or as states reconsider exactly what they are trying to measure.[20] For example, states once used data on whether a student’s family signed up for and qualified for a free or reduced-price lunch as a proxy for student poverty rates. But after the free and reduced-price lunch program no longer required every student’s family to opt in, program participation was no longer a useful proxy for family income. Now states are exploring other measures of student poverty, such as a family’s qualification for other public benefit programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Other states are starting to think about whether family income relative to the national poverty level is the best measure of student disadvantage.

Accountability Policies Should Meaningfully Connect with Other State Priorities. Accountability is best thought of, not as a stand-alone policy, but as an aligned, integrated effort to support the state’s education policy agenda. Accountability brings attention to the most important outcomes, allowing state leaders to track progress toward state goals—whatever they are. We strongly encourage state board members to think about the state’s broader education reform agenda and build coherent accountability systems to support that agenda.

For example, many states are expanding private-school choice opportunities, offering parents greater use of public dollars and greater individual responsibility for making educational decisions. In this context, what kind of data is needed—both for individual parents making decisions and for state leaders who need to ensure that taxpayer funds are well spent? Well-designed state accountability systems are essential in these contexts and support more effective policies. Other states seek to build a more robust, prepared educator workforce. Here, too, there is a need for careful measurement and consideration to track the effects of these efforts and support intervention where needed.

In short, accountability and measurement decisions should connect to state priorities up and down the education system, from early childhood through K-12 and to the workforce and higher education. These decisions therefore play an important role in encouraging a cross-sector view of educational challenges while also helping identify the most responsible actors for various outcomes. For example, to what extent are postsecondary outcomes the responsibility of postsecondary institutions versus K-12 systems?

During this period of a changing federal approach to education policy, state policymakers can easily experience considerable inertia, which favors maintenance of the status quo. But the role of state board members puts them at the intersection of policy and implementation—and they may well be able to build on what they already have in place.

State board members may feel like some of the vision or policy puzzle pieces are already in place in their state but are not fully connected to their approach to data and accountability. If this is the case, board members may find it useful to examine where current disconnects are between idea and practice in their state and what laws, leadership, or structures could help. For example, consider whether their state has a strong data governance entity explicitly charged with making decisions about how state data is securely connected across education agencies and used to provide actionable answers to policymakers’ questions. If they take stock of what they already have and summon will and consensus to keep pushing forward, state board members can set a clear vision for education in their states and adopt the measures to realize that vision.

Notes

[1] Morgan Polikoff et al., “A House Divided? What Americans Really Think about Controversial Topics in Schools,” report (University of Southern California Rossier School of Education and Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research, October 2022); Matthew Stone, “Federal Program Will Bring Private School Choice to at Least 4 New States,” Education Week, January 26, 2026.

[2] See the several reports of the American Enterprise Institute’s Chronic Absenteeism Research Working Group, website. Also see Zeyu Xu, Dan Goldhaber, and Rachel Dao, “Student Engagement in Charter and Traditional Public Schools before and after the COVID-19 Pandemic,” working paper 331-1225 (AIR, December 2025).

[3] Juan D’Brot et al., “State Support Network: Evaluating State Accountability Systems,” tool (AIR, 2020).

[4] “ESSA Tiers of Evidence,” handout (REL Midwest, N.d.).

[5] Rachel Canter, “Inside the Mississippi Marathon,” report (Progressive Policy Institute, April 2026).

[6] Sakib Mahmud, “Does State-Mandated Third-Grade Reading Retention Policy Improve Achievement? Evidence from a Staggered-Adoption Difference-in-Differences Design,” EdWorkingPaper: 25-1352 (Annenberg Institute at Brown University, December 2025).

[7] Results for America, “ESSA Leverage Points: 50-State Report on Promising Practices for Using Evidence to Improve Student Outcomes” (January 2018).

[8] Kentucky, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia.

[9] Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, and Tennessee.

[10] Connecticut, Delaware, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, New Mexico, and Rhode Island.

[11] Nicholas Munyan-Penney, Abigail Jones, and Shayna Levitan, “Reassessing ESSA Implementation: An Equity Analysis of School Accountability Systems,” report (EdTrust, September 2024).

[12] PIE Network, “No Longer in the Dark: How a Partnership between State and National Advocates Helped L.A. Parents Get the Answers They Deserved,” case study (2020).

[13] Ethan Hutt and Morgan S. Polikoff, “Toward a Framework for Public Accountability in Education Reform,” Education Researcher 49, no. 7 (October 2020), https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X20931246.

[14] Adam Tyner, “Grade Inflation: Why It Matters and How to Stop It,” Flypaper blog (Thomas B. Fordham Institute, October 17, 2024); Jessica Grose, “Parents Don’t Know It but K-12 Students Are Falling into ‘the Honesty Gap,’ ” opinion, New York Times, April 2, 2025.

[15] Chris Domaleski, “What Is School Accountability? Untangling Definitions, Purposes, and Possibilities,” post (Center for Asessment, May 14, 2025).

[16] Jake Steel and Chad Aldeman, “Addressing Military Recruitment Challenges through Data Sharing,” essay (Modern War Institute at West Point, December 15, 2023).

[17] Education Commission of the States, “School Accountability Systems 2024,” 50 state comparison web page (September 2024).

[18] Scott F. Marion, James W. Pellegrino, and Amy Berman, eds., Reimagining Balanced Assessment Systems (National Academy of Education, 2024), doi:10.31094/2024/1; Data Quality Campaign, “The Guide to Assessments (for Nonassessment Experts) (October 2021).

[19] Data Quality Campaign, “Growth Data: It Matters, and It’s Complicated,” brief, posted January 23, 2019.

[20] Data Quality Campaign, “Toward a Better Measure: Recommendations for State Policy and Education Leaders on Measuring Student Need,” posted March 29, 2022.