Accountability in US Education: Applying Lessons from K–12 Experience to Higher Education

A new push for accountability has become an increasingly important feature of education policy in the United States and throughout the world. Broadly speaking, accountability seeks to hold educational institutions responsible for student outcome using tools ranging from performance “report cards” to explicit rewards and sanctions. We survey the well-developed empirical literature on accountability in K–12 education and consider what lessons we can learn for the design and impact of college ratings. Our bottom line is that accountability works, but rarely as well as one would hope, and often not entirely in the ways that were intended. Research on K–12 accountability offers some hope but also a number of cautionary tales.