Accountability for College and Career Readiness Developing a New Paradigm

This paper from Linda Darling-Hammond, Gene Wilhoit, and Linda Pittenger recommends an accountability approach that focuses on meaningful learning, enabled by professionally skilled and committed educators, and supported by adequate and appropriate resources, so that all students are prepared for both college and career when they graduate from high school. Drawing on practices already established in other states and on the views of policymakers and school experts, this report proposes principles for effective accountability systems and imagines what a new accountability system could look like in an imagined “51st state” in the United States.