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Christopher Cross was an assistant education secretary in the George H. W. Bush administration. He recently spoke with us about new accountability recommendations the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education campaign released today. Cross joined a committee of other education luminaries to formulate the recommendations, which go well beyond the current system and its predominant reliance on standardized tests.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: Why do you think we need a new accountability system? What's wrong with the current one?

CROSS: I think there are many problems with the current system. One is that it has certainly not engendered widespread support from the education community. Number two is that it is viewed as being narrow. Third is the question of how the system operates--what the sanctions are, who is held accountable for what and at what level.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: Given that these are the problems you discern in the current system, what are the major features of the proposed plan, the Broader Bolder Approach plan, that address some of these problems?

CROSS: The BBA statement, addresses those problems in a number of ways. First of all, we did create the statement on the basis of widespread consultation. We have people in the field: There have been a great number of people who signed up to BBA and signed up on the general principles. We then convened a task force of about 20 people, including many classroom educators, who worked very hard to draft this statement and to get it to the point where we felt that it conveyed the principles of BBA and the importance of having a new system of accountability.

Also, it does include clear statements about accountability at many levels, from parents to communities to states to schools, and to all of the actors therein.

So those are important features. In addition, there is the fact that [this statement] is broad. It is not a narrow statement based upon reading and math. It is clearly speaking to the question of how we're going to improve schools and who the various people are who are responsible for having that happen.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: The plan has two major planks, as I understand it. There's a federal role and a state role. I was wondering if you could tell me more about these roles in this plan.

CROSS: First of all, at the federal level, there needs to be much more emphasis put into better data and better information, and information that is broader than has been used to date. So, what we propose is to expand the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the Nation's Report Card, to get the test back to where it actually was in its first days, back in the early '70s. We were looking at a wider array of subjects as well as student work habits, physical health, citizenship habits, and things of that sort. These were actually--most people don't realize it--part of NAEP to begin with, but they have faded over the years, often because of budgetary issues. But if we're going to be serious about [accountability and school improvement] we need to have that kind of information.

Certainly NAEP needs to improve its disaggregation, because that has not been up to the same level that we would want it to be today. We also propose to use NAEP in a way that continues its emphasis as a low-stakes indicator, not something used to make judgments.

Then we propose that states develop their own accountability systems that use NAEP as a benchmark. But state accountability systems, we feel, have to go much farther than they have to date, and really get into systems that inspect schools.

By inspection I mean literally having people on site in the schools who can look at the wide variety of factors that make a school work. This is not unknown in other cultures, in other countries. The British have inspection systems, the Dutch have them, and our friends in many other countries around the world have them. Sometimes these are called accreditation systems, but the principles are the same. You're looking at data, but you're also getting into the place, talking to people, getting a sense of it and feeling how it works.

About five years ago I happened to be in London at a conference between the British and the U.S. around urban schools. One of the mornings we went out and visited a high school in East London that had just gotten its inspection report. It was amazing the degree to which that report was influencing the whole community there; it came together to address the issues the report had outlined. We need to see that kind of involvement replicated here.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: You've mentioned the inspection systems at the state level. What happens, if anything, to state assessments?

CROSS: State assessments would continue to be a significant factor in [this new accountability system]. We are not advocating doing away with state assessments. We believe schools have to be held accountable for student learning. There's absolutely no quarter on that ground.

But you also have to look at a number of other factors as well, including the quality of teaching which, as we know, cannot be measured simply by looking at somebody's academic credentials. You've got to actually see what's going on in schools and classrooms, and see how teachers are working together to improve the education of children.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: So a much richer picture of what's happening inside of the schools to motivate assessment results.

CROSS: Yes, absolutely. Are [assessments] being used in a way that's constructive and informative?

You really need to have formative assessments as well, which are benchmark assessments throughout the year that give the immediate feedback to a teacher on--for example--did my students really understand fractions? Do they really understand the causes of war in the 20th century? Things of that sort. You don't want to wait until end-of-year assessments: When you get the results next year, the students are gone.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: To expand on this question of the state-level accountability systems, given that you're keeping the state assessments and you would add to it a richer set of inspections, do you think that this system still has the kind of teeth that people very often argue accountability systems need? As you know, a Broader Bolder Approach has been criticized for trying to get schools out from under their obligations.

CROSS: Yes. Certainly that has never been the intention, and schools have obligations. Their first obligation is to educate children. They have to educate them well, they have to close the achievement gap, they have to be raising the water level for everybody.

But at the same time, we recognize that there are other elements in society whose presence contributes to student success. For example, it's certainly not a surprise to anybody that we have large parts of the country, particularly in urban and poor rural areas, where children do not have health care and do not have access to a variety of social services that they need. It is true that it's much tougher, if not impossible, to educate children who are hungry, who don't have these other kinds of services available.

I want to be very clear. We're not talking about the schools or the education system providing those services. But why, in heaven's name, can we not have a society that coordinates the provision of those services to the people who most need it in the places where they can have best access. And that means in most communities--especially communities with children--services have to be connected to the schools.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: Is there some portion of your plan that includes the creation or expansion of indicators for accountability that include some of these out-of-school effects?

CROSS: Yes. Obviously, part of that will depend on each state. But we do think there have to be those indicators in [accountability systems]. For example, are parents being involved in the school? Are they participating when they are? Is there accountability for social service agencies actually providing services in collaboration with the schools? Those are some of the sorts of things we believe need to be in these accountability systems, as well as funding, of course.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: But do you think these other indicators that an accountability system at the state level should explore are ready for prime time, as it were? Do we have the data systems in place, or the ability even to gauge success in these areas right now?

CROSS: No, we don't. They certainly need to be developed. That's one of the things that is absolutely important to get done. But if we don't put a premium on having data in these accountability systems, then it's not going to happen.

You also have to have some incentive systems there to make people work together. You've got to have some way to look at what's going on and whether or not [collaboration between schools and social service agencies is] really happening. What are the incentives to have people work together--or, what are the sanctions if they don't?

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: So the sanctions could apply to more than just people in schools?

CROSS: Absolutely. They definitely need to, which means you have to have somebody at a level higher than the educational system--the mayor, the county executive, the governor, whoever--to get behind this [accountability system] and be an advocate for it to occur.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: If I could back up for a minute and talk a bit more about the federal role in this accountability system. You mentioned earlier that there's an idea you could expand NAEP to look more like it did in the early '70s and include a wider array of subjects and areas. Would the idea here be to expose states to greater scrutiny in how they're performing?

CROSS: Yes, definitely. If you have an enhanced NAEP and if you're using it as the measure against which you're benchmarking, you are going to see whether the states are measuring up.

Right now, I think the public is genuinely confused about what the measure is they're supposed to be using. I live in California. We have a state accountability system that uses something called the API, or Academic Performance Index. Then you have No Child Left Behind, which uses AYP, Annual Yearly Progress. People just shrug their shoulders. They don't know what this means. The result is that they discount them both.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: And very often schools’ API scores can look glowing but they don't make AYP, or vice versa.

CROSS: Absolutely. There's no consistency in the measures, because they're looking at different things in different ways.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: That leads to the question of transparency in the Broader Bolder Approach document. Do you have some sense of how you would create transparency for the community and for parents in a new accountability system?

CROSS: I think the inspection system--whether it's inspections formally, an inspectorate, accreditation or whatever--definitely brings [transparency] forward. What you're talking about there is a process that involves people from the community in the whole question of [creating] the report itself.

Then I would advocate the kind of model that I saw in Great Britain, where that report is delivered to the community. It's not delivered just to the school. That provokes a wide discussion about things.

I had an experience a few years ago of being in Australia right at the time they were giving end-of-high school exams. Each day the students would write on two or three questions. Then the next day, the newspapers would carry those questions. It led to a discussion in the community about what students were expected to know and what people were looking for in the content of those essays. It was a marvelous thing to see. It really did engage the community in a way that I have yet to see happen in the places that I have been in the U.S.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: The other question people will probably ask is, how on earth does one pay for this richer system?

CROSS: That's not an insignificant problem, by any means. The federal government needs to be putting up some of the money. It needs to be funding some models of what inspection or accreditation systems should look like. Then it needs to be working with states to support [their development].

But we're not talking about something that's going to come into existence overnight. It's going to take time to have it happen.

PUBLIC SCHOOL INSIGHTS: A final question, and that is if I should have asked you questions that I didn't.

CROSS: You mentioned earlier that there was this charge that BBA was soft on school accountability, and we certainly would state very strongly that's not the case at all. What we're looking towards is an improved system of accountability that takes into account all of the elements of society that are responsible for improving the lives of children, whether that's in school or out of school, and how that all relates to improving their education and, therefore, their chances for success.