How are schools across California tracking progress toward their goals in meaningful, measurable ways?
In a recent Parsec Education webinar hosted by Dr. Marshall Baker, educators gathered to discuss an increasingly essential concept for today’s school leaders: Results-Based Accountability (RBA). The RBA framework discussed today, originally introduced by Mark Friedman in Trying Hard Is Not Good Enough, has become a powerful tool for schools working to align their strategies with real outcomes. While the book laid the foundation, the conversation in this webinar focused on making it work in the dynamic world of K–12 public education, especially when it comes to tracking your strategic plan/Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) goals.
If you’re leading strategy, evaluating progress, or simply looking for better ways to connect daily efforts to big-picture change, RBA offers a structure that helps schools move beyond compliance into continuous improvement. And now, you can take that learning a step further with Parsec’s new educational guide: Results-Based Accountability: From Goals to Growth.
Why Results-Based Accountability?
Traditional improvement efforts often fall short not because of a lack of effort, but because of unclear systems.
Rather than only asking what activities have been completed, RBA asks what’s actually changed as a result. In a school setting, this means tying initiatives directly to student, family, and community outcomes. That kind of thinking helps schools keep their goals rooted in impact, not just activity.
RBA supports schools in:
- Clearly defining results
- Choosing relevant and measurable indicators
- Uncovering the story behind the data
- Developing focused strategies
- Reflecting and adjusting based on results
These aren’t just theoretical ideas. In the webinar, presenters walked through how schools are already applying RBA principles to understand chronic absenteeism, student engagement, and progress on multi-year strategic goals.
The Power of Asking “Why”
One of the most engaging moments in the webinar was the discussion of the 5 Whys technique—a method built into the RBA approach. The idea is simple but powerful: keep asking “why” until you uncover the root of an issue.
Let’s say chronic absenteeism is up in your school.
- Why? Students are disengaged.
- Why? They don’t feel supported in class.
- Why? Teacher-student interaction is limited.
- Why? Class sizes are too big.
- Why? Staffing shortages impact scheduling.
With each question, you move beyond the surface. Instead of creating a short-term attendance incentive, you start identifying long-term solutions like staffing investments or student-teacher support programs.
This method doesn’t just help you analyze—it helps your teams collaborate. It gives educators, administrators, and even students a role in understanding what’s really going on.
RBA in Action: More Than Just a Template
The RBA framework is adaptable. Schools use it to shape plans, evaluate program impact, and better tell their story to stakeholders. Whether you’re preparing for a school board presentation or revisiting your strategic plan mid-year, RBA helps bring clarity to what’s working and what isn’t.
The downloadable guide expands on this by offering a step-by-step process, including:
- How to clarify the results you want
- How to choose indicators that match your goals
- How to gather qualitative data from student and staff feedback
- How to avoid the most common pitfalls, like disconnected goals or over-reliance on numbers
What makes RBA especially useful in schools is that it welcomes complexity. It doesn’t force data into neat boxes. It recognizes that improvement happens over time, and that not all metrics are created equal.
Indicators: Not All Data Is Created Equal
Many district goals sound great on paper—“increase engagement” or “support the whole child”—but without clear indicators, they’re hard to track.
The guide emphasizes the importance of using the Best Available Data (B.A.D.) to support strategic planning. When choosing metrics, school leaders should consider:
- Communication Power: Does this data make sense to a broad audience?
- Proxy Power: Does this indicator represent something truly important?
- Data Power: Is the data timely and trustworthy?
Districts can use this rubric to prioritize data that speaks to what really matters and avoid being stuck with what’s easiest to measure.
Tips for Making RBA Work in Your school
One of the biggest takeaways from the webinar? Implementation doesn’t have to be perfect to be powerful.
Leaders who are just getting started can begin by applying RBA to one area—such as attendance, behavior, or family engagement. From there, you build capacity over time.
A few implementation tips that came up in the discussion:
- Start small and scale: Choose a single initiative and apply RBA thinking to that first
- Use visual dashboards: Make data accessible and readable for all stakeholders
- Involve the right people: Include both leadership and those working directly with students
- Schedule time for reflection: RBA is not a one-time task—it’s a cycle
The guide includes a list of common missteps to avoid, including focusing too much on easy-to-measure outcomes and ignoring qualitative stories. When done well, RBA makes room for both.
Connecting RBA to Real Progress
The reality is that many school leaders are already collecting the right data—they just need a better way to organize, analyze, and act on it. That’s where the combination of RBA and tools like Parsec’s Clarity platform come in.
Clarity is built to help schools:
- Centralize school and Strategic goals
- Align actions to outcomes
- Collaborate across departments on real-time data
- Track what matters—not just what’s easy to count
While this blog and the webinar provide the overview, the educational guide is your next step toward implementation. It’s designed to be used immediately by leadership teams, program coordinators, and accountability staff.
Want to Bring RBA Into Your School?
This webinar was just the beginning. The full downloadable resource, Results-Based Accountability: From Goals to Growth, takes everything discussed and turns it into an actionable guide for schools and schools. Inside, you’ll find:
- Step-by-step applications of RBA in a school context
- Examples tied to engagement, attendance, and more
- Checklists for getting started
- A closer look at how to connect RBA to Strategic Goal Setting
Ready to dive deeper?
📥 Download the guide: Results-Based Accountability – From Goals to Growth at parseceducation.com/resources
If you’ve ever found yourself asking, “We did the work, why aren’t we seeing the change?” This is the next step.
