Examining the Assumptions Underlying the NCLB Federal Accountability Policy on School Improvement

Abstract

Many wonder whether the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) will realize its goal of improving achievement among low-performing students in high-poverty schools. An examination of assumptions that underlie the accountability and school improvement aspects of this federal policy suggests that it will not. In spite of the coherence of the systemic reform framework in which NCLB is based, flawed rules for placing schools in improvement status, mismatches between actual needs and pre-prescribed service types, and major gaps in state and local capacity for designing and providing services mean that the implementation of school improvement may be insurmountably limited by the NCLB policy basis. Following this analysis, five recommendations for the next reauthorization of our nation's federal education policy are offered.

Notes

¹ These minimum ns range from one to 100 with a mode of 30 (Forte & Erpenbach, 2006).

² Multiple conjunctive decision models are those in which an outcome is based on two or more criteria that must each be met. Conjunctive models can be contrasted with compensatory models, in which an outcome is based on multiple criteria, but meeting some of these criteria can compensate for not meeting others.