Standards & Accountability

Business Group Urges Sticking With Standards

By David J. Hoff — February 28, 2001 3 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

States should stay the course in the standards and accountability movement, a leading business group recommends, because the effort is starting to show results after more than a decade of work.

For More Information

The report, “Measuring What Matters,” is available from the Committee for Economic Development. (Requires Adobe’s Acrobat Reader.)

While not all the pieces of the puzzle are perfectly in place, the Committee for Economic Development says in a report released last week, the early returns from new testing systems are spurring changes that lead to improved student learning.

“Just the information alone is having a tremendous effect about the way we think about education in this country,” Janet S. Hansen, the Washington-based business group’s vice president for education policy, said at a news conference held here to release the report. “It gives us the basis for conversation, more than just sort of an ad hoc, nongeneralizable, personal feeling about whether [the quality of] education is good or bad.”

The next step will be in honing the systems so that they are fair ways to reward high-performing schools and teachers, and properly identifying students who need help, according to the CED’s “Measuring What Matters: Using Assessment and Accountability To Improve Student Learning.”

“Our central recommendation is that tests should be used and improved now—rather than resisted until they are perfect—because they provide the best means of charting our progress toward the goal of improved academic achievement,” the report contends.

Hot Issue

The committee, whose members include Fortune 500 executives, academic leaders, and high-technology entrepreneurs, enters the standards and accountability arena as the issue is rising in prominence on Capitol Hill.

President Bush has proposed that states participating in federal education programs be required to assess student learning every year in grades 3-8 as a way of measuring school effectiveness. Some Democrats, led by Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, have responded with their own accountability measures, ensuring that the topic will be at the center of debate this year.

“There’s a lot of congruence between what they’re recommending and what we’re talking about,” Charles E.M. Kolb, the CED’s president and a former domestic-policy adviser in the first Bush administration, said of the White House and Democratic proposals.

As the debate takes place, the CED’s statement sends an important signal to lawmakers that the business community is fully behind accountability measures, according to Matthew Gandal, the vice president of Achieve, a Cambridge, Mass.-based nonprofit group led by business executives and governors that promotes standards-based initiatives.

“This shows the business community is committed long-term to getting this right,” Mr. Gandal said. “They’re trying to get into more depth as to why assessment is so crucial in education reform.”

Perfecting Assessments

In the next stage of the accountability movement, the CED says, states need to take a variety of steps, mostly to improve the tests themselves.

The assessments need to be reviewed to ensure that they are aligned with states’ academic standards, the report says, while teachers need to be taught how to review test data to help them improve their teaching.

In addition, the report argues that accountability systems be based on the results of several assessments and emphasize schools’ growth across several years, rather than comparing schools’ performance with one another’s.

The report also urges business leaders to insist that high school transcripts include a student’s test scores. And it suggests that states carefully experiment with teacher pay-for-performance plans.

Essentially, the CED report reaffirms what representatives of the business community said at a 1999 summit of governors, business executives, and education leaders. Attendees at the two-day meeting—held to mark the 10th anniversary of the national education summit in Charlottesville, Va., out of which the current standards movement grew—issued a statement urging policymakers to review their standards and assessments carefully and expand standards-based initiatives to include pay- for-performance plans for teachers. (“Teaching Tops Agenda at Summit,” Oct. 6, 1999.)

CED officials acknowledged that their proposals to improve tests in order to stimulate significant improvements in student achievement would require an infusion of money to be successful.

“One of the things that has held [such improvements] back,” Ms. Hansen said, “is financial.”

A version of this article appeared in the February 28, 2001 edition of Education Week as Business Group Urges Sticking With Standards

Events

Artificial Intelligence K-12 Essentials Forum Big AI Questions for Schools. How They Should Respond 
Join this free virtual event to unpack some of the big questions around the use of AI in K-12 education.
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
School & District Management Webinar
Harnessing AI to Address Chronic Absenteeism in Schools
Learn how AI can help your district improve student attendance and boost academic outcomes.
Content provided by Panorama Education
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Science Webinar
Spark Minds, Reignite Students & Teachers: STEM’s Role in Supporting Presence and Engagement
Is your district struggling with chronic absenteeism? Discover how STEM can reignite students' and teachers' passion for learning.
Content provided by Project Lead The Way

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

Standards & Accountability What the Research Says More than 1 in 4 Schools Targeted for Improvement, Survey Finds
The new federal findings show schools also continue to struggle with absenteeism.
2 min read
Vector illustration of diverse children, students climbing up on a top of a stack of staggered books.
iStock/Getty
Standards & Accountability Opinion What’s Wrong With Online Credit Recovery? This Teacher Will Tell You
The “whatever it takes” approach to increasing graduation rates ends up deflating the value of a diploma.
5 min read
Image shows a multi-tailed arrow hitting the bullseye of a target.
DigitalVision Vectors/Getty
Standards & Accountability Why a Judge Stopped Texas from Issuing A-F School Ratings
Districts argued the new metric would make it appear as if schools have worsened—even though outcomes have actually improved in many cases.
2 min read
Laura BakerEducation Week via Canva  (1)
Canva
Standards & Accountability Why These Districts Are Suing to Stop Release of A-F School Ratings
A change in how schools will be graded has prompted legal action from about a dozen school districts in Texas.
4 min read
Handwritten red letter grades cover a blue illustration of a classic brick school building.
Laura Baker, Canva