Educational Implications of Report Cards in the Accountability Policy of the No Child Left Behind Act

This chapter summarizes the history and effects of standards-based school accountability in the United States and offers suggestions for accountability policy moving forward. It analyzes standards-based accountability in both the No Child Left Behind Act and the Every Student Succeeds Act, and discusses the effects of accountability systems. The authors argue that school accountability systems can improve student achievement, but that unintended consequences are possible. How accountability systems are designed—the metrics and measures used and the consequences for performance—has both symbolic and practical implications for the efficacy of the system and the individuals affected. Synthesizing what is known about the design of school accountability systems, the authors propose policy choices that can improve the validity, reliability, transparency, and fairness of these systems.

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Niezamierzone skutki stosowania testów wysokiej stawki. Lekcja z amerykańskiej reformy NCLB

Studia Edukacyjne ◽

10.14746/se.2016.42.3 ◽

1970 ◽

pp. 39-64

Author(s):

Alicja Zawistowska

Keyword(s):

No Child Left Behind ◽

Standardized Tests ◽

Core Curriculum ◽

High Stakes Testing ◽

Exit Exams ◽

Unintended Effects ◽

High Stakes ◽

Left Behind ◽

Teaching Standards ◽

Accountability Policy

Educational decision makers willingly draw on solutions adopted in other countries. It was also the case in Polish educational reform started in late 90s. Since the introduction of the reform, Poland joined countries whose educational system is divided into three levels, each ending with an exit exams and core curriculum is set to teaching standards. The exams seem to be the most important element of the Polish reform. While the designers of educational policies are often inspired by the experiences of other countries during the planning phase, they are less willing to learn from them when it comes to predicting outcomes of the reform. A good case to analyze potential consequences of high-stakes testing is United States, where standardized tests have been administered since the beginning of the era of mass education. In this paper I will analyze the effects of the last, most controversial federal reform, commonly known as No Child Left Behind introduced in 2002. Findings of the study might be used to predict potential unintended effects of using the high stakes tests for accountability policy. The article addresses the problem of test scores inflation as well as the factors which may accelerate it.

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Accountability as a Design for Teacher Learning: Sensemaking About Mathematics and Equity in the NCLB Era

Urban Education ◽

10.1177/0042085916646625 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 53 (3) ◽

pp. 382-408 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Ilana Seidel Horn

Keyword(s):

No Child Left Behind ◽

Teacher Learning ◽

Educational Inequality ◽

Unintended Consequences ◽

Learning Design ◽

Left Behind ◽

Accountability Policy ◽

Urban Educators ◽

Design Perspective

Using a learning design perspective on No Child Left Behind (NCLB), I examine how accountability policy shaped urban educators’ instructional sensemaking. Focusing on the role of policy-rooted classifications, I examine conversations from a middle school mathematics teacher team as a “best case” because they worked diligently to comply with the NCLB. Using discourse analysis, I identify instances of torque in their conversations: when educators’ compliance with accountability logics pulled them away from humanistic goals of education in ways that stood to exacerbate existing educational inequality. This article contributes to documentation on unintended consequences of accountability policies while identifying features that contribute to torque.

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Relations between accountability and improvement strategies in New York City’s Children First Networks

Education Policy Analysis Archives ◽

10.14507/epaa.25.3210 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 25 ◽

pp. 122

Author(s):

Kelly McMahon

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

No Child Left Behind ◽

School Districts ◽

School Quality ◽

Report Cards ◽

Support Providers ◽

Left Behind ◽

Improvement Strategies ◽

School Report Cards ◽

Children First

Federal school accountability policies like No Child Left Behind were based on a logic that measuring school performance and making the results public through tools like school report cards would incentivize educators to create strategies for improving school quality. Yet, most schools needed more than incentives to be able to design improvement strategies that would lead to all students becoming proficient in standard subjects like math and ELA. As a result, states and school districts implemented an infrastructure of supports. To date, there is little research that considers how support providers use accountability tools to diagnose problems and design targeted improvement strategies. Without better knowledge of how schools and providers commit to particular improvement strategies, it is difficult to determine whether we need better school report cards or strategies, or both to improve school quality. This study aims to address this gap by examining how four Children First Networks in New York City used accountability metrics to develop targeted improvement strategies, which led to distinctly different improvement strategies. The article closes with implications for policy.

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State-level autonomy in the era of accountability: A comparative analysis of Virginia and Nebraska education policy through No Child Left Behind

Education Policy Analysis Archives ◽

10.14507/epaa.27.4013 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 27 ◽

pp. 6 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Ryan Richard Ruff

Keyword(s):

No Child Left Behind ◽

Comparative Analysis ◽

Policy Process ◽

Political Identity ◽

State Level ◽

Executive Branch ◽

Assessment Model ◽

Left Behind ◽

Accountability Policy

Following the 1983 A Nation at Risk report and culminating in No Child Left Behind (NCLB), states designed and implemented accountability policies to evaluate student achievement. External assessments of these policies identified substantial variability in the level of stakes associated with each system. This paper presents a comparative analysis of accountability policy prior to and during implementation of NCLB. Using the Virginia Standards of Learning and the Nebraska School-based Teacher-led Assessment and Reporting System, it explores the role of the historical and political context in shaping assessment policy through the lenses of the processes, conditions, and consequences of the policy process. It concludes that the influence of Nebraskan historical culture embedded the role of local action in the design and interpretation of accountability policy, which when combined with the collaborative efforts of the board of education, legislature, and executive branch, resulted in an atypical assessment model involving actors across the policy process. The Virginia experience was characterized by a strong political identity of centralization, yielding a top-down accountability system that constrained resources and opportunities for transforming policy at local levels. Findings demonstrate how comparable policy intentions for accountability are transformed due to existing state-level conditions and local policy culture.

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Principal Turnover under No Child Left behind Accountability Pressure

Teachers College Record ◽

10.1177/016146811912100203 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 121 (2) ◽

pp. 1-44

Author(s):

Hajime Mitani

Keyword(s):

No Child Left Behind ◽

Title I ◽

Small Sample ◽

Policy Implications ◽

Policy Makers ◽

Principal Turnover ◽

Elementary And Secondary Education ◽

Left Behind ◽

Accountability Policy ◽

The Impact

Background/Context The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act was a performance-based accountability policy designed to motivate educators and administrators to change their behaviors and improve school and student outcomes. The simple logic behind this accountability policy was that they would change their behaviors to avoid sanctions. Many studies have investigated the impact of NCLB on students and teachers; however, little research has examined its impact on school principals even though they were a prime target of NCLB. Purpose/Objective This study fills the gap in the literature and investigates the impact of NCLB sanctions on principal turnover. It answers whether NCLB's informal and formal sanctions influenced principal turnover behaviors and whether the influence was moderated by principal and school characteristics. It also examines patterns in principal transfers and position changes. Research Design This study uses longitudinal administrative data and detailed school-level assessment data obtained from Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education from 2001–02 to 2009–10. It constructs a distance variable to the adequate yearly progress threshold and uses it as a key matching variable in propensity score matching to identify comparable schools not facing NCLB sanctions. Postmatching logistic regression models identify the impact of NCLB sanctions. Findings/Results Although I find no evidence that informal sanction affected principal turnover, the impact is significantly moderated by principals’ job experience, Title I school status, and the percent of non-White students. The first-year NCLB sanction does not appear to have affected principal turnover. However, this finding needs to be interpreted with caution because of the way the NCLB sanction system is structured and the small sample sizes. A descriptive analysis of the relationship between the second-year NCLB sanction and beyond, and principal turnover suggests that principals tend to leave their schools when they face NCLB sanctions. Finally, I find that principals transfer away from Title I schools, transfer to schools with a smaller number of high-needs students, and take positions at district central offices, regardless of whether they face NCLB sanctions. Collectively, NCLB sanctions appear to have impacted principal turnover. Conclusions/Recommendations The results from this study have policy implications. They suggest that policy makers should provide professional support and adequate resources for principals, especially inexperienced principals, who work at low-performing schools and face sanctions. Moreover, policy makers should develop and embed a policy in new accountability systems that addresses inequity in the distribution of principal quality.

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On school choice and test-based accountability.

Education Policy Analysis Archives ◽

10.14507/epaa.v13n41.2005 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 13 ◽

pp. 41 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Damian W. Betebenner ◽

Kenneth R. Howe ◽

Samara S. Foster

Keyword(s):

No Child Left Behind ◽

School Choice ◽

The United States ◽

State Assessment ◽

Report Cards ◽

Choice Data ◽

Assessment Data ◽

Left Behind ◽

Conceptual Overview ◽

Choice Program

Among the two most prominent school reform measures currently being implemented in The United States are school choice and test-based accountability. Until recently, the two policy initiatives remained relatively distinct from one another. With the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), a mutualism between choice and accountability emerged whereby school choice complements test-based accountability. In the first portion of this study we present a conceptual overview of school choice and test-based accountability and explicate connections between the two that are explicit in reform implementations like NCLB or implicit within the market-based reform literature in which school choice and test-based accountability reside. In the second portion we scrutinize the connections, in particular, between school choice and test-based accountability using a large western school district with a popular choice system in place. Data from three sources are combined to explore the ways in which school choice and test-based accountability draw on each other: state assessment data of children in the district, school choice data for every participating student in the district choice program, and a parental survey of both participants and non-participants of choice asking their attitudes concerning the use of school report cards in the district. Results suggest that choice is of benefit academically to only the lowest achieving students, choice participation is not uniform across different ethnic groups in the district, and parents' primary motivations as reported on a survey for participation in choice are not due to test scores, though this is not consistent with choice preferences among parents in the district. As such, our results generally confirm the hypotheses of choice critics more so than advocates. Keywords: school choice; accountability; student testing.

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Do Accountability Policy Sanctions Influence Teacher Motivation? Lessons From Chicago’s Low-Performing Schools

American Educational Research Journal ◽

10.3102/0002831207306767 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 44 (3) ◽

pp. 594-630 ◽

Cited By ~ 78

Author(s):

Kara S. Finnigan ◽

Betheny Gross

Keyword(s):

No Child Left Behind ◽

Student Outcomes ◽

Teacher Motivation ◽

Professional Status ◽

Theoretical Assumption ◽

Low Performing Schools ◽

Left Behind ◽

Accountability Policy ◽

Using Data ◽

Policy Mechanisms

The federal No Child Left Behind Act and previous performance-based accountability policies are based on a theoretical assumption that sanctions will motivate school staff to perform at higher levels and focus attention on student outcomes. Using data from Chicago, this article draws on expectancy and incentive theories to examine whether motivation levels changed as a result of accountability policies and the policy mechanisms that affected teacher motivation. Through a combination of qualitative and quantitative data, the authors found that the value teachers placed on their professional status and their goals for students focused and increased their effort, but low morale had the potential to undercut the sustainability of teachers’ responses.

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