No Child Left Behind: standards, accountability, and educational measurement

Teaching and Standards

NCLB requires states to test students annually and offers a menu of penalties for schools that fail to show progress on those exams. States must measure up against a baseline that rises every year up to 2014, at which point all students are expected to score "proficient" on tests.

States, however, establish the content standards and passing thresholds of the tests -- meaning there's an incentive for states to lower testing standards to avoid federal sanctions.

The simple conclusion: Some states are "dumbing down" their exams to let more students pass and more schools show "adequate yearly progress" under NCLB.

NCLB seeks to make local schools accountable to federal bureaucrats. Accountability should be geared towards providing transparency about school performance. And those who can make a difference, ultimately, are the parents. (Lips, 2007)

At the core of the No Child Left Behind Act are a number of measures designed to drive broad gains in student achievement:

Annual Testing. Students in grades 3-8 tested annually in reading and math. Students tested in science at least once in elementary, middle and high school. NAE Progress test taken by sample of 4th and 8th graders to compare results.

Academic progress. States must bring all students up to the "proficient" level on state tests by the 2013-14 school year.