Perspective | Beyond the waiver debate: Rethinking how we measure school performance

Recent debates about federal accountability waivers for states such as Alabama and Idaho highlight a familiar tension in public education.

Much of the discussion has focused on a simple question: Are these states lowering expectations, or should they be given more flexibility?

That framing misses the bigger issue. Most modern accountability systems trace their design to the early 2000s, when the No Child Left Behind Act established annual statewide testing as the primary way to measure student learning at scale.

Those systems were built around a straightforward idea. Student learning would be measured primarily through statewide exams given at specific points in time. These tests provided a common measure for comparing performance across schools and districts.

That approach made sense at the time. Large-scale standardized testing was the only practical way to produce reliable statewide information about student learning.

But the measurement landscape has changed.

Schools and districts now generate far more information about student learning than annual state tests alone can provide. Curriculum-embedded assessments, interim benchmarks, adaptive learning platforms, and formative assessment systems all produce ongoing evidence about student progress throughout the year. These tools give educators immediate feedback and provide school and district leaders with a clearer picture of how students are progressing throughout the year.

Yet accountability debates still tend to revolve around a single question: Which tests should serve as the primary measure of student learning and, by extension, school performance?

Seen from that perspective, the waiver proposals in Alabama and Idaho are not surprising. States are trying to fit accountability systems designed for fairly uniform academic pathways into a high school landscape that now emphasizes multiple postsecondary options.

Today’s high schools are expected to do several things at once. They must show whether students have mastered academic standards. They must also signal whether students are prepared for life after graduation, whether that path leads to college, a career, or military service.

Those are all legitimate goals. But they represent different outcomes and are rarely best measured with the same tool.

Rather than debating which tests should carry the most weight, policymakers should ask a broader question: Do accountability systems themselves need to evolve?

Accountability frameworks reflect the measurement tools available when they are built. When those tools improve, the systems should evolve as well.

Modern assessment tools make it possible to design systems that preserve clear statewide comparisons while drawing on richer evidence about student learning. Periodic statewide assessments would remain an essential anchor, providing a common benchmark across schools and districts. But accountability systems could also incorporate additional evidence generated throughout the school year.

Such an approach would still provide the public with clear information about school performance. But it would better reflect how students actually learn and progress.

Over time, accountability systems may also be able to include measures of the broader skills students need after high school. Researchers and educators are increasingly exploring ways to assess durable skills such as problem solving, collaboration, and communication. Many of these measures are not yet ready for high-stakes accountability, but advances in assessment technology suggest that more reliable indicators may soon be possible.

None of this means abandoning statewide testing or weakening accountability. Comparable academic measures remain essential for ensuring that all students have access to rigorous learning opportunities.

National benchmarks such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress will continue to play an important role in maintaining transparency across states. Work comparing state proficiency standards with NAEP has also highlighted what some researchers call an “honesty gap” between reported proficiency rates and actual academic performance.

Clear and comparable information about student learning must remain central to any accountability system.

But the waiver debates in Alabama and Idaho point to something larger. They highlight a growing disconnect between accountability systems built around a narrower set of assessment tools and the broader evidence about student learning now available to schools and states.

The challenge is not simply to debate which tests should carry the most weight within the current framework. It is to recognize that accountability systems, like the education systems they measure, must evolve as better tools and better information become available.