Accountability works when schools and districts use it to refocus on what kids in the classroom deserve, and to clearly and directly communicate that purpose to the school community.

But accountability metrics and scores can easily become about the adults in a school building rather than the kids those numbers represent. In these cases, adults often make decisions out of self-preservation rather than on behalf of what’s best for students. When this happens, accountability has damaging and far-reaching consequences.

A superintendent I worked closely with years ago said to me, “The fastest way I’ll be out of a job is if our state test scores don’t improve.” This was the justification offered when, as a director of literacy, I was being asked (read: mandated) to shift away from the network’s longstanding, postsecondary-aligned, written performance tasks toward daily multiple-choice assessments. While their intentions may well have been less egoistic than they surfaced in this conversation, accountability and senior leader job security were undeniably linked.

Compare this perspective on state accountability metrics to a conversation I had recently with another superintendent. Same state, same accountability metrics, same political context. This leader saw their data rise from an F to a C in one year of their tenure and said: “We predicted this accountability score; now we know we are accurate in how we evaluate student learning. The score shows that when we work together, we will have better outcomes for kids. This year, we will get a B, but then the point won’t be chasing an A. Our real work becomes delivering [on] the mission we promised kids and families, not the letter grade our district receives.”

Accountability can be a motivator, a frame, or a sense of clarity defining grade-level proficiency. Without clear systems for accountability, asking a question as simple as “How well are students learning here?” can be impossible to answer. A parent or student should be able to say definitively, “I am in fifth grade, and I read like a __ grader. I am in fifth grade, and I do __th-grade math. I go to a school that performs better than other schools in my neighborhood. My district does a good job helping students learn English. My district has solid attendance and good graduation rates.”

A former colleague of mine and a current senior leader in a district criticizes what she calls “accountability math.” Accountability math is when educators parse: “If I can get X kids from subgroup A and Y kids from subgroup B to Achievement Level 2, we will land safely in an [insert accountability score here].” Rather than considering what achievement means for these students, or how achievement levels affect the overall student learning experience or their long-term trajectory, accountability math means a teacher instead pulls a series of levers that result in a pat on the back for a job sufficiently done. When accountability math is at the center, decision-makers become myopic and frequently choose inauthentic learning for the sake of points rather than the research-backed best methods of instruction that support students’ learning.

There is a real tension around accountability in states where the frequent path forward is “teaching to the test,” raising scores on one specific assessment without transferring learning to actual, long-term competency.

Take that superintendent whose fear about job security led to daily multiple-choice exercises. Research shows that practicing multiple-choice drills can teach students to get better at multiple-choice drills. But truly comprehending what you read requires frequently grappling with both complex texts and building background knowledge, and unrooted multiple-choice questions don’t contribute to either. The knee-jerk curricular decisions made with accountability in mind were likely to have limited, if any, long-term effects on student reading comprehension. Thus, there would be limited, if any, actual improvement in student achievement metrics.

On the flip side, after the shift to Common Core State Standards, most New York state schools had poor showings in student performance. One superintendent in the state looked out across the sea of terrible results, saw one school district towering above the rest, and asked, “What did that school district do to get those results for their students?” That superintendent then put resources, funding, time, training, and personnel behind emulating the work of the school that had such dramatically better performance. This district’s student performance began to steadily climb from that point on.

I am a parent of a third grader — the first “tested” grade across most states — and in the context of accountability, I imagine two different worlds for her. In one, my daughter is a “bubble kid” in a school with leaders worrying about accountability math, where she may well receive extra attention, but it will be limited to test prep. In another, my daughter attends school in a “mid-performing” district where school leaders acknowledge accountability deficits and invest in authentic learning and resources that support sustained change. I know where I want my child to be.