Atlas's approach is to mobilize communities and schools by establishing a set of principles adhered to by children, parents and community schools. The school district has to agree to support a comprehensive assessment system. It is a performance-based system with pathways to enable students to know what they need to know by their senior year of high schools. Ms Gerstle talked about hard work, sustained over time. A lot of time and energy is spent up-front in order to do it well and thoughtfully.
Students work on portfolios and exhibitions.
Other measures of success are test scores and library books checked out. Monty Neill of the Cambridge-based Fairtest, talked about what he thinks a good accountability system should look like. More accountability means more information than you get in a single test. Every school should have an annual report that keeps track of how the school is doing for children. At its core is student work.