Accountability Issues and Reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act

Summary

Federal policies aiming to improve the effectiveness of schools have historically focused largely on inputs, such as supporting teacher professional development, class-size reduction, and compensatory programs or services for disadvantaged students. Over the last two decades, however, interest in developing federal policies that focus on student outcomes has increased. Most recently, the enactment of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB; P.L. 107-110), which amended and reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), marked a dramatic expansion of the federal government’s role in supporting standards-based instruction and test-based accountability, thereby increasing the federal government’s involvement in decisions that directly affect teaching and learning.

As states and local educational agencies (LEAs) have implemented the federal accountability requirements, numerous issues have arisen that may be addressed during ESEA reauthorization. Among these issues are those pertaining to the comparability of data across states and the development of state accountability systems of varying degrees of rigor, the one-size-fits-all set of consequences applied to schools that fail to make adequate yearly progress (AYP), the narrowing of the focus of instruction at the school level, and the evaluation of teachers.

Commonality versus flexibility: States have had the flexibility to select their own content and performance standards, as well as the assessments aligned with these standards. This has resulted in a different accountability system in each state, making it difficult to sum up where students are in terms of skills and knowledge and to gauge the net effect of the NCLB.

Absolute versus differentiated consequences: Schools simply do or do not meet AYP standards, and there is generally no distinction between those that fail to meet only one or two required performance or participation thresholds to a marginal degree versus those that fail to meet numerous thresholds to a substantial extent.

Incentives to focus on proficiency: Schools and LEAs are held accountable for the achievement of all student subgroups. They are not, however, held accountable for students at all levels of achievement. Because the goal of the current system is for 100% of students to become “proficient” by school year 2013-2014, schools and teachers may target instructional time and resources towards students who are nearing proficiency rather than distributing resources equally across students at all achievement levels.

Assessment and the narrowing of the curricular focus: Because assessments are aligned with state content standards, there may be a risk that “teaching to the standards” becomes “teaching to the test.” The practice of “teaching to the test”—whether intentional or unintentional—may narrow the curriculum.

Teacher evaluation and accountability: The NCLB added a requirement that all teachers be highly qualified. Over time, however, the requirement has come to be seen by many as a minimum standard for entry into the profession and a growing body of research has revealed its underlying emphasis on teachers’ credentials to be weakly correlated with student achievement. As such, the Administration has moved toward measuring teacher effectiveness based on student achievement, and promoted a focus on output-based accountability for teachers.