This executive summary accompanies a report by Marc Tucker, NCEE’s Founding President, calling for replacing the current system of test-based accountability with a system much more likely to result in improvements in student performance.  Tucker points out that the current system has not only failed to improve the performance of the at-risk students it was designed to help, but has alienated the best of our current teachers and created an environment in which able young people choosing careers are less likely to choose teaching.

The report explains that the countries in which student performance is outstripping the achievement of American students are not using accountability systems like ours, which they view as more appropriate for industrial-era blue-collar workers than the kind of professionals they want in their schools.

Fixing Our National Accountability System argues for a much needed alternative to the kind of punitive accountability measures now dominating American policy.  Fixing accountability will not just require a different accountability system but a different kind of education system altogether.