All students should graduate from high school ready for college and the workplace. This means that the state must drive schools and districts to achieve college and work readiness for all students, and hold individual schools and districts accountable if they fall short. It also means that the state must identify and intervene in chronically low-performing schools, and provide those schools with the supports necessary to make significant and sustainable improvement.

Washington is working to develop a statewide assessment of college readiness. The state also has plans to implement a new accountability index and is developing a new system to address the state's lowest-performing schools. These plans are crucial to helping Washington move toward a successful accountability system. However, they are not sufficient. The state must also ensure that its accountability system has high goals and is achieving them. To do this, the state must broaden its accountability indicators, adopt measurable performance goals, and implement a system for intervening when students are falling behind. And in order to have a truly effective accountability system, the state must be given the authority to intervene in chronically low-performing schools.

To learn more, read our policy brief: Accountability Systems that Measure What Matters