Instructor: John Tanner
New cohort open
A Path to Benefits-Based Accountability™ for K-12 Schools
Join the movement - and take a student-first approach to school performance.
You always knew school accountability was broken.
You just couldn’t put your finger on why.

Meet Your Instructor
John Tanner is one of the nation’s foremost voices on school accountability. His bravEd Benefits-Based Accountability™ Framework was designed to help school district teams embrace a system of school performance that puts students and community stakeholders, and not test scores, first. Sign up today.
The Experience
Here’s what to expect when your school team joins braveEd’s nationwide Benefits-Based Accountability™ Framework.
The Sessions
What follows is an example description of the sessions you’ll attend in Year 1 of the program:
Session #1
Define your hopes and dreams
Get an introduction to benefits-based accountability, learn the vocabulary and plot a path forward for your schools and students.
Session #2
Understand Benefits-Based Accountability™
Learn about the two types of accountabilities and establish a system based on shared benefits.
Session #3
Build broad capacity for change
Improving accountability means becoming a different type of organization. In this session, you’ll answer key questions to help transform your thinking one conversation at a time.
Session #4
Become a trust-building machine
Master and embrace the best parts of the Benefits-Based Accountability Framework to build critical community-based relationships and tell the truth about change.
Session #5
Communicate ‘for what’ and ‘to whom’
Together, your team will learn how to clearly communicate the motivations and goals behind your program to colleagues, parents and policy-makers.
Session #6
Pressure test your benefits-based framework
Develop an early draft of your organization’s Benefits-Based Accountability Framework™ to share with stakeholders for candid feedback.
Session #7
Take an evidence-based approach to success
Learn how and where to collect evidence of success and use the right data to generate continued support for your approach.
Session #8
Scale your work across multiple systems
Done right, a Benefits-Based Accountability Framework isn’t ‘one more thing,’ it’s the thing that helps you communicate the success, or failure, of your most important initiatives.
Session #9
The role of the central office
Learn how school district leaders can work together through shared responsibilities to build broad-based support for change.
Session #10
Speak Benefits-Based Accountability™ fluently
Deploy your Benefits-Based Accountability Framework™ to have a new kind of community-based conversation about the future, one that puts students, and not test scores, first.
The Outcomes
A Benefits-Based Accountability™ mindset starts with you and your schools being able to do the following four steps over and over, with ease.
1. Use the right vocabulary
2. Center everything around student benefits
3. Shape your school for the future and not the past
4. Tell your truths, in a language your stakeholders understand
The result is a student-centric accountability environment that is good for your students, understood by their parents, and embraced by communities.
Primer Cohort
Learning Efforts
Accountability Mindset Book
Doing Team Efforts
Board Training
New Admin/Board Induction
Working Cohort
Learning Efforts
Accountability Mindset Book
Doing Team Efforts
Board Training
New Admin/Board Induction
District Model
Learning Efforts
Accountability Mindset Book
Doing Team Efforts
Board Training
New Admin/Board Induction
Experience the power of
Benefits-Based Accountability™ today
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is the bravEd Benefits-Based Accountability Framework?
Created by nationally recognized data scientist, writer and speaker John Tanner, the bravEd Benefits-Based Accountability™ Framework replaces outdated compliance-based school performance models, with a benefits-based approach that accounts for circumstances inside and outside of school that impact a child’s education. The framework can be delivered as part of multi-day engagement within a larger school district, or as part of a multi-district cohort experience.
Why adopt the bravEd Benefits-Based Accountability Framework?
As schools struggle to close achievement gaps forced wider by a global pandemic, educators desperately need a reliable system and process by which to accurately measure school performance. But traditional accountability measures are broken — and have been for years. The bravEd Benefits-Based Accountability Framework™ exposes and systematically removes inherent biases found in traditionally compliance-based school accountability frameworks in favor of a benefits-based approach, with focus on students and future improvements.
What’s included in this program?
The Benefits-Based Accountability Framework™ includes a combination of guided and asynchronous professional learning opportunities, including scheduled strategic accountability conversations, a series of virtual project-based workshops, available coaching. Plus, a copy of John’s latest book, Accountability Mindset: a blueprint for a worthwhile educational accountability. The process is designed to get educators talking about traditional accountability systems, to identify what’s working and what’s not, and develop a new, more holistic system to more accurately measure and reflect modern-day school performance.
Who should participate?
The bravEd Benefits-Based Accountability™ Framework was designed specifically for school leaders and internal and external teams. The program can be packaged and delivered to select members of a school district’s leadership team, or scaled out to teachers and staff and community leaders as part of a comprehensive district-wide implementation.
How will this help my team?
The bravEd Benefits-Based Accountability™ Framework helps school leaders by exposing long-held biases in traditional K-12 accountability frameworks and providing an alternative, benefits-based system that better reflects the future needs and circumstances of individual students, parents and other stakeholders. Team members have an opportunity to learn about and embrace a mindset of Benefits-Based Accountability™, while workshopping problems of practice to implement a system that reflects the unique needs and challenges of their local communities.
What if my state already has a letter-based system?
You’re not alone. Though bravEd’s Benefits-Based Accountability™ Framework cannot replace these largely compliance-based systems, it can give you a parallel mindset and approach by which to be accountable to your stakeholder community by focusing on the evidence, benefits and forward-thinking school performance measures that they expect and that you need to make real improvements.
How can I participate?
If you’re interested in bringing a system of Benefits-Based Accountability™ to your school or district, you can request more information, including a detailed syllabus and proposal for your team. Simply follow the button at the top or bottom of this page. Once you submit your information, you’ll receive a call from our partnership coordinator who can walk you through the registration process and answer any questions you may have.