AI and
Accountability

Introduction

Our third and final convening, Interweaving Assessment: AI and Accountability, was hosted on April 7th-8th, 2026, in Los Angeles, CA, as a pre-con to the annual NCME and AERA meetings.

This convening centered on the R&D challenges and opportunities the field should attend to when considering AI in service of accountability and school improvement systems. In particular—and in continuation of the work of the second convening—addressing how definitions of validity and the processes to establish validity must be reconceptualized within an evolving technological landscape to ensure fairness and minimize bias.

As the final convening of the series, we utilized our time with participants to work through three main objectives. First, participants collaboratively surfaced new priorities to address challenges/opportunities for innovation in accountability and school quality/improvement systems. Then, participants revisited these new R&D priorities—along with the priorities generated during the first and second convenings—vis-à-vis accountability and school quality/improvement systems goals, purposes, and problems of practice. Finally, participants identified partners and opportunities to advance the R&D agenda, and ideated how to make the agenda actionable and useful for various interested parties.

We again hosted a pre-convening AI & Accountability Know Before You Go Webinar. The webinar featured invited speakers Lillian Pace (KnowledgeWorks), Nicholas Munyan-Penney (EdTrust), Tony Monfiletto (Future Focused Education), Dr. Arthur VanderVeen (New Meridian), and Dr. Lauren White (WestEd). The webinar discussed the historical context related to accountability and school improvement; exemplar local systems designed where students drive the vision of what they need and want from their communities to be successful; and the need to build through lines from classrooms-to-district-to-state systems in ways that support student learning. The webinar concluded with the challenges inherent in designing state summative systems that hold the needs of teaching and learning in equitable ways. Similar to the first and second convenings, we also prepared a brief (please see below) that summarizes convening activities, outcomes and next steps in the R&D agenda development process.