This paper shares the importance of including the early years in state accountability systems; those years are of critical importance to achieving long-term educational success but have been largely ignored in previous state accountability efforts. States have the opportunity under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) to encourage and support improved practice at the early elementary level — and earlier.
Valuing the Early Years in State Accountability Systems Under ESSA
This paper shares the importance of including the early years in state accountability systems.
Key Findings
This paper shares the importance of including the early years in state accountability systems; those years are of critical importance to achieving long-term educational success but have been largely ignored in previous state accountability efforts.
Best practices for states seeking to use accountability systems to drive improvement in the early elementary years include:
- Focusing on the quality of instruction in the early elementary years, rating schools both on the quality of the instruction itself and on the quality of the systems to support quality instruction.
- Putting specific attention on the early elementary years by disaggregating measures of school quality by grade, which can help ensure that these years are given at least their proportional weight in measurements of overall school quality.
