For the past 15 years, federal, state, and local officials have pursued a broad range of reforms to ensure that the nation’s public school system is more accountable. They hope this culture of accountability can improve and restore trust and confidence in our nation's public schools.

Most parents, and most Americans more generally, applaud the goals of the education accountability movement and support some of what it has accomplished. Still, they also see it as profoundly incomplete.

"Will It Be on the Test?" summarizes research from Public Agenda and the Kettering Foundation and explores

• where education leaders and parents see eye to eye on accountability
• where they part company
• whether it's possible to find common ground on these competing views
• additional questions for further research

Research for "Will It Be on the Test" includes focus groups with parents and principals held in Washington, DC; Detroit; New Orleans; Westchester County, NY; Birmingham, AL; and Denver. We also reviewed the large storehouse of survey data on parents' and principals' views on public education and the writing and statements of leaders and reformers on accountability.

This report is an outgrowth of a 2011 Kettering Foundation/Public Agenda report that revealed a potentially corrosive gap between the way that leaders and the public define accountability. "Don’t Count Us Out: How an Overreliance on Accountability Could Undermine the Public’s Confidence in Schools, Business, Government, and More" describes how contrasting visions of accountability can feed public distrust of institutions rather than reducing it.

How do some schools in high-poverty communities produce remarkable stories of success while others fail? How can we implement strategies that enabled their success in other schools across the country?

In this webinar, Public Agenda’s President Will Friedman, Ph.D., and Director of Research Carolin Hagelskamp, Ph.D., share findings from our 2013 report “Failure Is Not an Option.” They explore some of the characteristics and practices of nine schools that beat the odds and overcame tight budgets, restrictive labor agreements and poverty to earn distinctions of excellence from the state of Ohio.

The webinar also includes information about the Success for All program, a whole-school reform strategy that uses data to inform instruction. Cofounder and Chairman of the Success for All Foundation Robert Slavin, Ph.D., and Cofounder, President and CEO of the Success for All Foundation Nancy Madden, Ph.D., discuss how education leaders can implement Success for All in their own schools and districts.

The webinar concludes with a story from Marjorie Radakovich, the principal of East Garfield Elementary School in Steubenville, Ohio, one of the schools featured in "Failure Is Not an Option." East Garfield has spent 5 years as a School of Promise. Eighty-seven percent of the student body comes from an economically disadvantaged background and a quarter of students have a disability.

Opportunities for Further Research and Engagement

Public Agenda can help you tell the story of what success looks like in your district or state. While additional research may not reveal groundbreaking new information, we have found that exploring and describing these stories of success can give your community something to celebrate and rejuvenate the reform dialogue.

Research on unexpectedly high-achieving schools also opens up additional questions to explore: What are the varied pathways to success? How are these principles implemented? And, most importantly, how are they sustained? We can help explore these questions in your community.

Furthermore, through decades of work, Public Agenda has found that school transformation is best addressed by including all of the many stakeholders in planning and decision making. If you’d like to speak about how to engage principals, teachers, students, parents and concerned community members in meaningful dialogue about school reform, contact us.

If you have additional questions about Public Agenda or are interested in exploring ways to address questions on the varied pathways to success, please contact:

Allison Rizzolo, Communications Director
arizzolo@publicagenda.org
212-686-6610 ext 148

If you have additional questions about the Success for All program or would like more information on grant opportunities at your school, please contact: sfainfo@successforall.org.

In spite of high poverty, tight budgets, sub-optimal parent participation and ill preparation, there are schools that produce extraordinary students and remarkable stories of success. What makes these schools work so well, and can it be replicated in others?

Public Agenda spoke to principals, teachers, students and parents at nine of Ohio's high-poverty, high-achieving schools. We wanted to know:

• How do they define the keys to success?
• What are some specific strategies and decisions that may contribute to their success?
• How do they sustain success?
• What helps them weather tough times?

Our hope is that the insights and ideas that emerged from this qualitative study stimulate a fresh, open and constructive dialogue on improving K-12 education in Ohio and nationally.

The study was supported by the Ohio Business Roundtable, the Ohio Department of Education and The Ohio State University. The nine schools included primary and secondary schools and were a mix of traditional public schools, magnet schools and a charter school. Read the stories of each of the nine schools by downloading the report.