The Education Data That Matter Most to Parents and School Stakeholders Download the PDF here. Today’s school accountability systems are the primary tool education leaders use to understand the health of the education system and how well it provides all children an opportunity to learn the knowledge and skills needed to succeed in the 21st century. They accomplish this by measuring and transparently reporting students’ yearly outcomes in academics and other areas. When schools do not meet benchmarks, states require that they take action to improve. However, this system of accountability fails to include meaningful metrics that take into account the context in which students learn, their communities, and the resources made available to them. Most existing school accountability systems do not give leaders—especially those at the local level—a recipe to follow that leads to better outcomes for students. That is, accountability systems are too often designed without critical information about the component parts and the most effective step-by-step process for education stakeholders to follow in order to reach the desired outcome: a quality education for all students.