Beyond Identification: Creating the Conditions for Continuous Improvement

August 19, 2026

By Mel Wylen and Mitch Herz

Over the past decade, states have invested considerable effort in refining their accountability systems to provide information that is more meaningful about school performance and to better target support for improvement. Recent waiver approvals from the U.S. Department of Education are bringing renewed attention to how states can use federal flexibility to better align accountability, resources, and school improvement efforts.

Arkansas offers one example. In July 2026, the U.S. Department of Education approved several elements of Arkansas’s Returning Education to the States request, including ESEA waivers and Education Flexibility Partnership (Ed-Flex) authority. The approval is part of Arkansas’s broader effort to create a more unified approach to funding, accountability, assessment, and support.

Arkansas’s approach is notable not simply because of the flexibility itself but also because of how the state intends to use it. Arkansas has sought to connect its accountability system with planning, funding, and differentiated support for districts and schools. Its unified planning process asks districts to examine student achievement and progress, establish priorities, and align available funding with those priorities.

This type of coherence creates an important opportunity for school improvement while also surfacing a larger question for Arkansas and other states reconsidering the relationship between accountability and improvement: What organizational conditions need to be in place for local education agencies (LEAs) and schools to turn that opportunity into improved outcomes?

Better accountability systems create better opportunities, not necessarily better outcomes. Outcomes improve only when educators have the organizational conditions to turn information into action.

Accountability systems can identify patterns, surface disparities, and focus attention on where improvement may be needed. On their own, however, they cannot explain why those patterns exist or determine what should change. That work happens through the people, processes, and routines that connect evidence to action.

A continuous improvement lens helps illuminate that work. Rather than treating accountability results as the end point of an annual process, LEAs can use them as an entry point into ongoing cycles of inquiry, action, learning, and adaptation. Four organizational conditions can help make that possible. Together, they reflect shared responsibility across the education system: States create the conditions. LEAs activate those conditions. Schools implement improvement.

Condition 1: Gain a Shared Understanding of What the Data Tell Us

Accountability data provide important signals. They can highlight differences in outcomes across schools and student groups, reveal trends over time, and identify areas that warrant closer attention. An accountability indicator, however, is a signal, not a diagnosis. It does not tell educators why an outcome occurred or what they should do about it.

This makes assessment and accountability literacy an essential organizational condition for improvement. LEA and school leaders need a shared understanding of what indicators measure, what they do not measure, and what additional evidence is needed to understand the problem.

States can support this work by clearly communicating the purposes and appropriate uses of accountability measures and by supporting assessment and accountability literacy. LEAs activate those conditions by helping educators examine accountability information alongside other sources of evidence.

The goal is to move beyond asking “What does our accountability rating tell us?” toward asking “What is this evidence helping us understand, and what else do we need to know?”

Condition 2: Create Structures for Collaborative Inquiry

Understanding the evidence is only the beginning. Continuous improvement requires disciplined inquiry into the systems and processes producing current outcomes.

LEAs need structures that allow educators to examine patterns and variation, investigate potential root causes, test assumptions, and develop a shared understanding of the problem before moving to solutions. These routines require dedicated time, access to relevant evidence, structured inquiry processes, cross-functional collaboration, and leadership that supports learning.

States can strengthen these conditions by providing improvement tools, inquiry protocols, professional learning, and differentiated technical assistance. LEAs activate them by embedding collaborative inquiry into routine decision-making.

Accountability helps identify where improvement may be needed. Collaborative inquiry helps educators understand what needs to change.

Condition 3: Align Resources and Test Changes

Once educators understand the problem, improvement science encourages them to move beyond asking “What program should we adopt?” and instead consider “What change do we believe will improve this system, and how will we know?”

Selecting an evidence-based strategy matters, but improvement also depends on how well the strategy fits the local problem and how effectively it is implemented. LEAs need to translate what they learn through inquiry into coherent action, aligning professional learning, instructional supports, staffing, resources, and school improvement planning around a manageable set of priorities.

Arkansas illustrates one way a state can create conditions for greater coherence. Through the AR App, the state consolidated 17 state and federal planning requirements into a unified process connecting student data, priorities, activities, and budgets. Its waiver request also seeks greater flexibility for LEAs to braid resources around high-impact, evidence-based strategies.

Flexibility and coherence at the state level are most meaningful when LEAs have the capability to translate priorities into practice. That capability will look different across contexts. Large LEAs may have dedicated accountability, research, curriculum, and improvement staff, while smaller LEAs may rely on a few leaders to perform many of these functions. State support should account for this variation rather than assume that every LEA needs the same type or intensity of assistance.

Arkansas’s differentiated support model provides one example: Levels of flexibility, cooperative support, monitoring, and direct state support vary according to district and school performance, with Educational Service Cooperatives extending targeted assistance to districts and schools.

Strategic action turns what educators learn through inquiry into focused changes that can be tested, implemented, and refined.

Condition 4: Learn, Monitor, and Adapt

Continuous improvement does not end when a strategy is selected or an improvement plan is submitted. Implementation itself creates opportunities to learn.

LEAs and schools need routines for examining whether changes are being implemented as intended and what is being learned, where results vary, and what should be adapted. Implementation measures, short-cycle outcome data, observations, and other local evidence allow teams to learn while improvement efforts are underway rather than wait for the next annual accountability cycle.

States create conditions for this learning when accountability and technical assistance systems allow space for reflection and adaptation. LEAs activate those conditions by establishing routines for monitoring implementation, examining evidence, and helping schools adjust strategies based on what they learn.

Accountability then becomes an input into continuous improvement rather than an annual end point.

From Greater Flexibility to Greater Improvement

Recent federal waiver approvals are bringing renewed attention to how states can use federal flexibility to create greater coherence among accountability, funding, planning, and school improvement. Arkansas demonstrates one approach: connecting accountability with a unified planning process, differentiated support, and greater flexibility in how resources are aligned with identified needs.

For states reconsidering their accountability and improvement systems, the opportunity extends beyond changing indicators, methodologies, or identification rules. It is an opportunity to strengthen what happens after a need is identified: how LEAs make sense of evidence, investigate the systems producing current outcomes, align resources around well-defined problems, test and implement changes, and learn from those efforts over time.

This requires states to consider not only what their accountability systems measure but also what those systems enable educators to do.

States create the conditions → LEAs activate those conditions → Schools implement improvement

Better accountability systems create better opportunities, not necessarily better outcomes. Realizing the promise of those systems requires building the organizational conditions that turn evidence into inquiry, inquiry into action, and action into learning.

When accountability is connected to that continuous cycle, identification is no longer the destination. It becomes the starting point for improvement.

About the Authors

Mel Wylen is a seasoned expert in education strategy and accountability systems. As a research manager on WestEd’s Center for Mobility and Measurement team, she brings more than a decade of experience in partnering with state and local education agencies to turn accountability data into actionable strategies that drive smarter resource allocation and measurable academic gains.

Mitch Herz is a national expert in school accountability system design and implementation with a focus on strengthening data systems that can drive school improvement and improved student outcomes. Herz helps states and districts create relevant, meaningful, and coherent accountability systems that communicate key information about student outcomes.

Turn Accountability Data Into Meaningful Improvement

WestEd works with state and local education leaders to strengthen the connections among accountability, assessment, planning, resource allocation, and school improvement. From building assessment and accountability literacy to supporting collaborative inquiry and continuous improvement, WestEd helps education systems create the conditions needed to move from identifying needs to acting on them.

Interested in strengthening the connection between accountability and improvement in your state or district? Contact WestEd to start a conversation.