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According to a recent Gallup poll, roughly 88% of parents believe their child is performing at or above grade level in reading and math. Yet the reality is quite the opposite: the National Assessment of Educational Progress found that only 31% of fourth graders are proficient readers.
We have an honesty gap in American education.
The gap is not simply between perception and reality. It is the gap between what students and families are told about progress and what academic outcomes ultimately reveal. Families cannot address challenges they do not fully understand, and schools cannot solve problems they are unwilling to name.
It’s also a gap between what school districts are paying for and what they’re getting in return. Every fall, districts invest millions of dollars in programs designed to improve student achievement. They invest heavily in educational resources which often start with the best intentions: adopting new curricula, purchasing technology, hiring tutoring providers and launching new interventions.
That challenge is particularly important given the scale of educational spending. More broadly, contracted educational services account for approximately 11% of school expenditures, or roughly $100 billion annually. National assessments show that reading and math achievement remain below pre-pandemic levels, with proficiency rates still lagging where they stood just a few years ago.
We can readily track how much money is spent, but we are often far less transparent about whether those investments are improving student learning.
And that’s particularly troubling because there is no more important investment we make as a society than the investment we make in our children. Taxpayers devote hundreds of billions of dollars to public education every year. Every education dollar represents an investment in our future workforce, our communities, and the next generation of leaders. That’s why we are right to expect evidence that those investments are producing meaningful results for students.
We need a fundamental shift in how we think about educational spending and one place to start is the way districts purchase products and services. Specifically, a shift to aligning incentives around student success by way of outcomes-based contracting.
For far too long, success in the education marketplace has been determined by what providers can sell rather than by what students learn. Regardless of whether their products meaningfully improve academic outcomes, service providers have largely been paid when contracts are signed.
Under the outcomes-based contracting approach, however, districts and providers establish clear goals at the start of a partnership. They agree on how progress will be measured, how results will be reviewed, and how both parties will respond if students do not make the expected gains. That level of accountability should be welcomed by service providers because it rewards those who are confident in their ability to improve student outcomes and exposes those whose promises do not translate into results.
Recent independent research supports this approach. A WestEd evaluation of outcomes-based contracting found that the model strengthened district-provider collaboration, reinforced shared accountability and, when implemented under the right conditions, contributed to improved student outcomes. Researchers also found that participating districts did not spend more than they would under traditional contracts while often receiving greater implementation support and tying a meaningful share of payment to student outcomes.
We’re beginning to see districts put that idea into practice. In South Bend, Indiana, the school district recently entered into an outcomes-based literacy contract that establishes clear expectations for implementation and ties a portion of payment to measurable student results.
Families can handle bad news because at least that gives them the option to do something about it. If a student is behind in reading or math, parents deserve to know. If a program is not producing results, communities deserve to know that, too. Transparency is about creating the urgency required to improve and not about assigning blame.
As scrutiny of educational outcomes continues to grow, the conversation should shift from whether or not a program was implemented to whether or not a program improved student learning.
That expectation should extend to both literacy and numeracy. We all deserve a clear understanding of whether children are developing the reading and math skills necessary to succeed, and schools deserve systems that measure success through student outcomes rather than activity alone.
It is what students deserve.
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