Results-based school accountability has been the linchpin of education reform in the United States for at least two decades. But the COVID-19 pandemic led many schools, states, and districts to put their testing and accountability programs on hold. Chester E. Finn, Jr., argues that it is time for the accountability holiday to end and makes…

When COVID-19 forced a hiatus in federally mandated assessments in spring 2020, it interrupted a quarter century of effort to track, disaggregate, and publicize achievement levels at the school level. The aborted school year put a big data gap where 2020 scores should have been. Combined with the already raging assaults on testing, state education…

The Advanced Placement program stands as the foremost source of college-level academics for millions of high school students in the United States and beyond. More than 22,000 schools now participate in it, across nearly forty subjects, from Latin and art to calculus and computer science. Yet remarkably little has been known about how this…