These days, it seems that whenever a state program goes awry, leaders call for an audit. The unemployment debacle that delayed payments to thousands of laid-off workers for much of 2020? Check. The months-long delay in issuing rental assistance? Check again.

So, credit Secretary of State Shemia Fagan for thinking proactively. Last month, she released a “systemic risk report” that outlines threats to the effectiveness of new K-12 educational investments and strategies set forth in the 2019 Student Success Act and the 2016 passage of Measure 98. Billed as the first of its kind, the report from Fagan’s auditing division synthesizes the findings of six previous K-12 audits and urged leaders to guard against the weak scrutiny, lack of data-based guidance, funding instability and ever-changing ambitions that have plagued state oversight of education.

The hope, she told legislators last week, is that reminding leaders now of such known risks and offering solutions will help the state “stay on course toward that north star that we all share of improving the lives of our students and our schools.”

It’s a valuable message that legislators, educators and Oregon’s next governor must hear. With $1 billion in additional revenue flowing in each year from a new corporate activities tax, the ability to significantly boost the quality of public education is within reach.

But Oregon risks squandering this opportunity if leaders — from local districts through state government — fail to make accountability a daily commitment, rather than something that comes only after a disaster occurs.

The risk report offers several recommendations for how to shore up weak spots. Among them: improve and expand data collection to better track student progress; check in on the Department of Education’s monitoring of district performance and implementation of grant-funded programs; require more transparent reporting of challenges standing in the way of school improvement; strengthen the agency’s enforcement of state standards on districts, such as diploma requirements and academic content expectations; support the education department in developing a comprehensive approach for improving K-12 education and clarifying or strengthening the education department’s authority in statute.

The report also gets at the longstanding tension between oversight from Salem and local control of school districts. Even though the vast majority of districts’ funding comes from state revenue, the education department has hesitated to take a stronger hand in guiding or demanding more from districts, even with student outcomes hanging in the balance.

Changing this dynamic will take commitment from the governor, who serves as Oregon’s superintendent of public instruction and appoints the education department head, and legislators who must assist in stabilizing education and keeping focused on achieving goals.

Oregonians should press the three candidates running for governor on what specifically they would do to shore up K-12 education and ensure that new revenue is achieving the objectives that policymakers identified. They should urge stronger and more visible leadership by the Oregon State Board of Education on the way forward for schools. And they should demand more of their legislators, who have, at times, undermined education improvement efforts or sent mixed messages about what Oregon values.

Among their baffling decisions: Democrats used their majority power last year to abolish a requirement that high school seniors either pass a test or produce a portfolio of work to demonstrate their proficiency in key areas to graduate. Education leaders — school districts, the state education department and the school boards association — had not called for such a change. But anti-testing advocates supported the move.

And yet legislators failed to advance a bill this year that would allow quicker state intervention for families of children with disabilities whose instructional needs are being shorted or denied by their local districts. Neither of these actions suggest a Legislature that understands what problems it should seek to solve.

Fagan’s risk report breaks with tradition in proactively asking leaders to reconsider their business-as-usual tactics to make sure that our educational system achieves the outcomes that students deserve. Oregonians should hope that the message comes through. We must stop making accountability an afterthought when everything goes astray.

Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the Baker City Herald. Columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not necessarily that of the Baker City Herald.