Restart & Recovery: Considering the Outlook for School Accountability

Taken together, the COVID-19 disruptions will have a substantial impact on accountability operations, calculations, performance, comparability, and interpretations — within and across years. Given these challenges, this resource provides guiding principles to inform states’ approaches to restarting accountability; a process to examine key decisions for accountability in SY 2020-21; considerations for developing, implementing, and evaluating systems in SY 2020-2021 and beyond. The focus of this paper is limited to accountability systems under ESEA and takes into account the constraints of the statute, waivers, and any necessary amendments to existing ESEA consolidated state plans.