In addition to assessing what students know and are able to do, a genuine accountability system also assesses the quality of opportunities, resources, instruction, and curriculum that are offered to students. School quality reviews, implemented in Britain, Rhode Island, and with the Boston Pilot Schools and Commonwealth charter schools, similar to the school accreditation process, are one way of providing schools with comprehensive feedback on their practices, while also putting in place a state-wide system of quality control and accountability. Key goals of school quality reviews are to ensure that equitable and quality resources and learning opportunities are being provided to all students, and that the school can demonstrate it is working to improve achievement of all students while also closing the achievement gap between low-income and affluent students, and between white students and students of color. The state would develop a set of benchmarks for successful schools. Using a similar set of benchmarks, a school selected for review would engage in a period of self-study to assess where it stood in reaching the benchmarks, and collect evidence in the form of a school portfolio to demonstrate its progress in meeting them.
Teachers play a key role in conducting the study.
To assist in the self-study period, schools will be encouraged to form small consortia to collaborate and assist one another in this process. The state would then send in a team, made up of school practitioners from other districts and other qualified people, to spend an intensive 3-4 days to observe students and teachers, interview parents, review the portfolio, and collect evidence to determine whether the school is making progress toward meeting the benchmarks. In particular, the team would also review a random sampling of assessments of students who have graduated or been promoted, to determine whether the school's assessments and the students' performances meet the demands of the Common Core and state benchmarks. At the end of the process, the review team would provide the school with written and oral feedback, including recommendations for improvement. CARE agrees that schools which fail to serve their students well and which are unable to improve despite help should not be allowed to continue without significant intervention.