At CRPE, we study how assessment, accountability, and oversight can strengthen public education while fostering equity, innovation, and continuous improvement. Our research examines how traditional accountability frameworks can narrow teaching and constrain schools’ ability to adapt, and we explore approaches that measure what truly matters for student success—academic growth, deeper learning, and readiness for life beyond school. We also investigate how oversight can balance school autonomy with strong protections for access and quality, ensuring that all students are well served. Across this work, our goal is to inform accountability systems that uphold public trust while enabling schools to innovate and respond to the diverse needs of their communities.
Governance reforms – those that open public education to innovation, new providers, competition, and family choice – often start with suspension of normal local politics, via mayoral or state takeovers that bypass the elected local school board.
Fourth in a CRPE Blog Series on Education Governance as a Civic Enterprise Those who have done well under traditional school governance systems are frightened by the ideas of families choosing their schools, schools controlling their own budgets and staffing, and meaningful accountability structures encompassing all schools.
The Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) has received a $435,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to study principals in Washington State and how they are hired and supported by the state’s school districts.
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