Over the last generation, standardized test scores of American school children lagged behind their peers in other industrialized nations. This prompted a national movement for better standards and accountability in education.

A number of state and local reforms as well as federal legislation—including the No Child Left Behind Act—have included stricter standards and benchmarks for measuring how well our children are learning. However, initially there were few centralized efforts to gauge and compare the achievement of different school systems.

Pew has become a leader in supporting programs that both grade educational systems across America and recommend policy solutions to help leaders establish better standards and accountability.

These programs include

• National Early Childhood Accountability Task Force, which helps states set standards for prekindergarten programs. Since the release of the Task Force’s report, “Taking Stock: Assessing and Improving Early Childhood Learning and Program Quality,” this project is now housed at the Council of the Chief State School Officers. Over the next twelve months, the Council of Chief State School Officers, with funding from The Pew Charitable Trusts, will use the Task Force’s findings to help states document and strengthen preschool program performance.
• Quality Counts, which tracks achievement in education by state and evaluates performance on a range of critical indicators and is a collaboration with Education Week.