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The suite of papers in this special Teachers College Recordissue on data-driven decision making in education reflects a burgeoning subdiscipline of scholarship on the topic that has been stimulated by the constantly evolving educational policy landscape. For at least two decades, policy makers have resonated to the importance of data in education as an accountability tool and have advocated policies for the collection and reporting of such data to fulfill accountability objectives. Early examples of this at the federal level include the creation of the National Education Goals Panel in 1990 (National Education Goals Panel, 1999) to annually report on national and state educational progress toward the National Education Goals adopted by president and the nation's governors, as well as requirements by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget for data documenting the effectiveness of federal programs both in and outside of education under the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) of 1994.The argument or implicit logic model among policy makers for the role and importance of data for accountability has taken two principal forms that we can label “soft” and “hard” accountability. Under soft accountability, the revelation of comparable public data about the performance of various levels of the system (e.g., states, districts, schools) is assumed to create public pressure on these entities’ future performance (National Research Council, 2011). That is, “naming and shaming” jurisdictions through publishing data about student achievement, dropout rates, qualifications of teachers, spending levels, and so on are assumed to create needed incentives for these entities to maintain their relative standing on these indicators if they are high or to improve them if they're low. One prominent example of soft accountability through data is the increasing promulgation of state reports during the 1990s and 2000s providing public metrics on critical indicators for all schools in a state.1Currently, all 50 states and the District of Columbia now publish such report cards annually as a requirement for receiving federal Title 1 funds.2

This chapter tracks the early effects of the 1988 amendments to the federal Chapter One programme on the policies and practices of four large urban districts (Atlanta, Chicago, Dade County and Dallas). Specifically, the article analyses reform efforts in the areas of programme co-ordination, parental involvement, school-wide projects and school performance accountability. Drawing on an historical analysis of the evolution of relations between the federal government and local school districts since the programme's inception in the 1960s, the authors argue that the apparently only modest impact of the 1988 reforms on the practice of Chapter One programmes to date is a result of a basic conflict between the intent of the reforms (to enhance educational effectiveness) and the political context as it occurs at the local level (an orientation toward bureaucratic and regulatory compliance).