The stated mission of high schools is to prepare all students for success in college, careers and citizenship. Yet in most states, high schools are rarely held accountable for ensuring that students achieve these goals as they are defined today. States need a new approach to accountability in high school–one that makes college and career readiness the central driver, provides the right information to the right people at the right time, and includes a continuum of college- and career-ready indicators to monitor students’ progress over time.

At a minimum, a college- and career-ready accountability system must include a set of indicators that measure college and career readiness, as well as a longitudinal data collection and reporting system in place to track and disseminate gaps in and/or progress toward and beyond the state’s readiness expectations.

Equally important is for states to set meaningful, measurable and achievable performance goals on the college- and career-ready indicators and to develop a set of incentives and consequences that encourages districts, schools and students to demonstrate improvement on those indicators.

Building High-Quality Data Systems

States must strengthen their data and information systems; few states can gauge how well high schools prepare students for college and careers. Longitudinal data systems should follow individual students from grade to grade and school to school, all the way from kindergarten through postsecondary education and the workplace. That way, student success (or failure) can be traced back to high school experience and the information can be used to strengthen the experience for the next class of students. Such systems will also provide more accurate measures of dropout and graduation rates.

There's been significant progress in the number of states that have committed to building P–20 longitudinal data systems. Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Missouri, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Washington and Wyoming, report having in place data systems with unique student identifiers that follow students from pre-kindergarten through the postsecondary level, and 37 other states and DC plan to develop such a system.