Standards-Based Reform and Accountability:
Getting It Right

Keeping Score
Why Standards and Accountability—Done Right—
Are Good for Schools, Teachers, and Kids
By John Cole

When we “keep score,” whether in sports, business, or education, we have to face up to failure—and do what’s necessary to address it. The president of the Texas Federation of Teachers argues that since his state started keeping score by adopting standards and accountability—and also provided the means to help children reach the standards—failure no longer goes quite so unnoticed and unremedied.

Getting Back on Course
Fixing Standards-Based Reform and Accountability
By Lauren Resnick and Chris Zurawsky

Standards-based reform and accountability has brought new attention to teaching our least successful students. But we can’t realize its full benefits or minimize the negative trade-offs without fixing several big problems: inadequate standards; lack of curriculum, instructional programs, and related professional development; poor, narrow tests that are hijacking the reforms; and an accountability formula that identifies not only failing schools, but improving ones too.

Standards-Based Reform Brings New Attention to Educational Necessities

Building New Knowledge
School Improvement Requires New Knowledge,
Not Just Good Will
By Richard F. Elmore

Telling schools to get better is the easy part.
The hard part is helping them figure out what the right thing is to do—and how to do it.

Curriculum First
A Case History
By Roger Shattuck

A school board member new to the world of K-12 schools discovers to his astonishment that neither his state nor his school district has a curriculum. As luck would have it, he discovers a great curriculum available to all.