School systems have instituted standards-based testing to raise the bar for their students' academic performance. Individual schools have long been rated against their local and national peers on the basis of their standardized test results. Increasingly, instead of measuring their students' achievement against national norms, new tests rate students on state performance goals. Results in Rhode Island schools were striking. 44 percent of the state's eighth-graders failed to meet the new standards on basic mathematics skills such as addition and subtraction, and only 19 percent reached the state's goal on problem solving. Ranking in the 50th or 52nd percentile in country in previous year, the state had become "falsely complacent" according to Peter McWalters, Rhode Island's commissioner of education. ⁵ Testing core knowledge rather than just students' relative achievement against each other exposed vast deficiencies in the schools, and provided a catalyst for reform.

Opponents of such testing disagree that teachers should be forced to focus excessively on preparing for the tests, emphasizing memorization of facts and concepts at the expense of holistic development of children. Tests cannot measure inquisitiveness developed in children, a love of learning about the world around them, reading, and increased awareness of and openness to other cultures. Additionally, they disagree with the belief that there are core sets of knowledge that students should learn. According to Ted Sizer, head of the Coalition of Essential Schools, a network of more than 1,000 schools that subscribe to his educational philosophy, "The whole notion that this small group of unelected people could decide the ideas that everyone is going to be held accountable for to me is outrageous." ⁶ The Los Angeles Unified School District, the second largest school system in the U.S. began it's push for standard's reform in 1995-96. In the development of the standards, the district used various state and national standards as a guide, but also involved more than 60,000 parents, students, teachers, union representatives and community members in the standards-setting process in order to instill a sense of "ownership" from all stakeholders. ⁷ Along with making people care about the results, this ownership also make the sectors want to work together to improve the education system.

  Overview: The Accountability Chain