To be sure, the (pre-COVID) decline that set in during the mid-2010s had many causes, including smartphones, the aftermath of the 2008 recession and a steep drop in time spent reading long-form writing. But few serious scholars treat the link between rigorous accountability and student progress as a coincidence. Most see its rise and fall as a major driver of both the era of steady improvement and its disheartening retreat.

As a former superintendent of Newark’s public schools, deputy chancellor in New York City and New Jersey’s commissioner of education (and, as importantly, as an AP U.S. History Teacher for four years), I have seen firsthand that the value of meaningful accountability is profound. Is there any other domain in American life that doesn鈥檛 operate on the principle that 鈥渨hat gets measured gets done鈥� or that sets high-performance standards but then eschews objectively measuring whether they are met?

Anyone who says you can have high standards for students and then never measure whether they have been achieved has never spent a minute in a classroom. Isn鈥檛 there also a message in the fact that the handful of states, notably Mississippi and Louisiana, that have bucked the current education recession have dug in on accountability (improving upon the NCLB playbook)? 

I have seen accountability鈥檚 profound benefits but am well aware of its flaws: narrowing curriculum at the expense of untested subjects like art, emphasizing the anti-educational practice of teaching test-taking skills, over-indexing the relevance of test performance to the exclusion of other indicators of learning and more. I have also seen how powerful political forces work relentlessly to undermine state- or federally imposed accountability measures: diluting standards, eliminating high school exit exams, scamming parents by reducing passing scores to artificially boost proficiency rates and substituting a laughably inflated grading system for objective evidence of learning.   

Only rarely do opponents challenge accountability鈥檚 core purposes of shedding light on and advancing learning in schools, districts or populations that are underperforming. Accountability came under pressure less on the merits than because it drew resistance 鈥� from teachers unions wary of being judged by student results, from a generalized hostility to any that compromises local authority, from that recoiled at testing as a matter of personal philosophy or due to NCLB鈥檚 emphasis on proficiency (whether a student cleared a fixed bar) over growth (the rate of progress toward that bar).

As Aldeman persuasively argues, the answer is not to abandon accountability but to support its evolution in a manner that preserves its strengths and mitigates its flaws. Assessments will never be perfect, but they can be and are being improved. Louisiana鈥檚 work in partnership with Johns Hopkins is a prime example. Other states and districts should follow the lead of the many schools that have proven that art and non-tested activities actually improve performance in reading and math 鈥� or that teaching the skills and knowledge embodied in high standards rather than test-taking skills is not teaching to the test but the very essence of sound educational practice.

None of these salutary practices, however, addresses the core problem inherent in the vagaries of politics 鈥� the recurring pattern of yielding to political pressures to weaken accountability. I have lived this in both New York and New Jersey: a tough, accountability-centered body of reforms yields broad achievement gains, which then retreat when a subsequent administration abandons them in response to political opposition. Energized by the understandable, if often injurious, human tendency to replace hard expectations with more comfortable ones, opposition to serious educational accountability has proven an enduring feature of the policy landscape.    

The replacement of NCLB with the Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015 reflected precisely this phenomenon at the federal level. The hard truth is that gains driven by accountability are especially fragile 鈥� vulnerable to reversal every time political winds shift or a new administration takes office.

A promising path to resisting this regressive tendency is to embed accountability in a place far less vulnerable to political revision and changing administrations. Working alongside local, federal-compliant performance standards, accountability should be situated in the purchasing decisions states and districts make every year. 

Outcomes-based contracting, like state or federal accountability mandates, measures results and attaches real consequences 鈥� aligning the district’s and the provider鈥檚 interests squarely with explicit learning objectives from the outset. Providers are compensated based on whether students demonstrate measurable learning gains, not on what materials they deliver. For children from under-resourced communities, a contract that ends when materials ship is not a neutral arrangement 鈥� it is a guarantee that no one answers when the work fails.

A provider with a genuine stake in the outcome builds responsive interventions 鈥� adjusting, coaching, reteaching 鈥� until gains are achieved. That is a fundamentally different accountability relationship than education has ever demanded of its vendors. 

The infrastructure to change this is beginning to take shape. The Center for Outcomes-Based Contracting, working with more than 70 districts as well as leading providers, is building shared standards and cross-district learning that enable both sides to enter these agreements with confidence.

Harvard鈥檚 Center for Education Policy Research is the impact of outcomes-based contracting on Indiana’s literacy strategy for grades 6 to 8. The state is also among several that are restructuring how they contract for literacy outcomes, focusing on middle grades where targeted, high-impact supports can make a meaningful difference. Nationwide, intervention for students above third grade has historically lagged.

 The lesson of the last quarter-century of school reform is not that accountability was misguided. But it can and should be reinforced by aligning vendor incentives with explicit student learning goals 鈥� putting accountability close enough to the classroom that there is no waiver to request, no reauthorization to wait for, no administration change to hide behind. 

Accountability at the contract level ultimately says to every provider what historic performance expectations have been saying to every district and school for decades: You will be judged by how much children are learning 鈥� and accept the consequences when they are not.

Following the example of organizations in health care, social services and both early and higher education, some districts are experimenting with outcomes-based contracting, paying vendors, at least in part, for improvements in student learning. That鈥檚 the closest one can get to a money-back guarantee in education. 

Tutoring is particularly well-suited to outcomes-based contracting, since boosting achievement is its raison d鈥檈tre. Contracts that pay more when students show academic growth 鈥� and pay less when they don鈥檛 鈥� incentivize tutoring companies to produce results and save public money when they fall short.

Two districts that are part of a pilot project led by the Southern Education Foundation 鈥� Florida鈥檚 Duval County Public Schools and Ector County Independent School District in west Texas 鈥� offer informative examples of different approaches to outcomes-based contracting with tutoring providers.

Officials in Duval County, a sprawling, 128,000-student district covering greater Jacksonville, realized that 5,000 ninth-graders each year were starting high school in a low-level, pre-algebra course due to poor outcomes in middle school. So they invested about $2 million in federal COVID recovery funds in an outcomes-based contract with a vendor that delivered three, 30-minute sessions per week of math tutoring to struggling eighth-graders at nine middle schools. 

Duval County鈥檚 vendor, FEV Tutor, in partnership with Edmentum, earns a base fee of $800 per tutored student. If a student hits an established midyear growth target, the vendor receives an additional $530. If that student then hits an established end-of-year growth target, the district pays another $700. Finally, if the student also scores proficient or above on the state assessment, the provider earns a $420 bonus. 

Both sides of the deal came into play last year, according to Jasmine Walker, Duval County鈥檚 former director of K-12 math, who joined the foundation to help other districts launch outcomes-based contracts. Of the 451 students that FEV Tutor worked with between January and May, 42% achieved at least the growth that was expected under the contract. That meant Duval ended up paying 57% of potential performance fees. As a result, FEV Tutor left nearly $70,000 in bonuses on the table 鈥� money Duval could reinvest in more tutoring or a different intervention for struggling students.

Ector County, which serves predominantly Latino students in the oil-rich Permian Basin, took a different approach. Its outcomes-based contracts pay two providers, Air Tutors and FEV Tutor, a base fee of $25 per completed session with each student. If a student shows improvement on the NWEA MAP assessment equivalent to more than one year鈥檚 growth in a school year, the district raises its per-session pay to $27.50. As student growth increases, pay can rise further.

But if a student loses ground, the vendor loses money. If a student who made gains regresses below the 49th percentile on the benchmark test, the per-session pay declines to $22.50. If the student regresses below the 40th percentile, per-session pay drops to $21.25.

Tracking each student鈥檚 progress is a laborious task that consumes much of High-Impact Tutoring Manager Carina Escajeda鈥檚 time toward the end of the school year. But it ensures that vendors make a real difference in student achievement.

Ector County鈥檚 providers are comfortable with baking incentives and penalties into their contracts. 鈥淲e believe in what we do at Air Tutors,鈥� says Hasan Ali, the company鈥檚 founder and CEO. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 mind putting our money where our mouth is because we are confident with our results.鈥�  

They have been impressive: 50% of Ector County students who scored below grade level on the previous year鈥檚 state assessment and received at least 20 hours of tutoring scored at grade level or higher after one year. And about 30% of students tutored in math scored in the 66^th percentile or higher on the standardized Northwest Education Association鈥檚 MAP exam after one year, reflecting more growth than would be expected in a school year.  

鈥淲hen we think about the public, this shows that we’re being responsible with funding, that we’re tying it to student outcomes and our district’s strategic plan,鈥� says Walker.

School districts have been slow to embrace contracts that tie pay to performance, in part because contracting officers in how to develop them. But as local education leaders work to sustain tutoring and other promising post-COVID programs as federal funding for the work winds down, outcomes-based contracting can help ensure they get the best return on their investment and help build a culture of performance in public education.