Comprehensive Reform Model

In order to provide all of the nation's children with the opportunity to achieve at high levels, states and district must implement a new system of accountability for their schools - one that is both fair to educators and credible to the taxpaying public. As part of a comprehensive approach to school reform that includes adequate and equitable school funding and the development of new a new testing regime, Operation Public Education has developed an accountability system that provides a blueprint to give all of our children the high-quality education that they deserve and the nation requires.

Operation Public Education's systemic approach to reform addresses the roles and responsibilities of stakeholders - school board members, administrators, teachers and students. Our model is comprehensive in its ability to take key reform areas such as assessment, educator quality, compensation, professional development and capacity building, make significant innovations in the way these are commonly designed or viewed, and combine them in a way that is fair to educators and most likely to impact student achievement. This template can help educational leaders move from the more typical practice of piecemeal reform that produces marginal improvements to sustainable systemic change.

OPE's reform model is the result of four years of work with teachers, administrators and school board members from across the nation. Elements in this model are inspired by best practices in North Carolina; Tennessee; Columbus, Ohio; Rochester, New York; and Coventry, Rhode Island. By building on this experience, OPE offers an accountability system that is even better than the sum of these parts. It has been written in legislative language to provide a template for states to write their own legislation.

The core of this unique system is that it provides a means to hold teachers and administrators accountable as individuals for student learning results. OPE's accountability system can do this while being fair to educators because, unlike other systems, it does not rely on raw test results which are biased by family income. In return for accepting this measure of accountability, teachers are given a greatly expanded role in school governance, including peer review, the remediation process and decisions over curricula and professional development and administrators, for the first time, gain critical information about what is happening inside their classrooms as well a new management prerogatives.

OPE's system also recognizes this country's strong tradition of local control. As long as there is adherence to the core characteristics - educator evaluation and compensation, new teacher mentoring, remediation, and professional development - the system allows for flexibility to account for differences across states and districts.

We realize that if schools are to graduate all students with the requisite skills for success in the knowledge-based society of the 21st-century - the ability to use technology, think critically, solve problems and learn on their own throughout their lives - the nation must also be prepared to invest new funds to help educators master new skills and knowledge. Another great benefit of OPE's accountability system is that it can serve as a simple quid pro quo: carefully targeted investment in return for fundamental education reform.

View a slide show overview of accountability.

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