Commitment and collaboration, rather than individual compliance, are the engines of improvement in schools.More high-stakes testing will not significantly improve teaching and learning. Nor can teachers, working alone, solve the twin challenges of educating in the 21st century: how to teach new skills and how motivate all students to achieve higher standards. Is relational accountability the new silver bullet in education? Obviously not, any more than new village schools are. I am increasingly convinced that we need to reinvent public education accountability at every level. We need better performance-assessment systems, online diagnostic tests, state-organized school quality reviews, choice of both different systems of academic standards as well as schools, a process for licensing school operators, as Paul T. Hill and his colleagues propose in their book Reinventing Public Education, and elimination of redundant, poor-quality state tests in favor of one high-quality national test of literacy and numeracy.

Whatever system we create, however, must be rooted in an understanding that commitment and collaboration, rather than individual compliance, are the engines of improvement in schools. At their core, new village schools encourage the creation of accountable relationships—between educators, parents, and the community; between teachers and students; and among teachers—where mutual respect and a shared sense of purpose, rather than fear, are what motivates both student and adult excellence.