A guide to building a student-centered accountability program through teaching, leadership, the curriculum, and the involvement of parents and the community.

The 2002 No Child Left Behind Act is the most important legislation in American education since the 1960s. The law requires states to put into place a set of standards together with a comprehensive testing plan designed to ensure these standards are met. Students at schools that fail to meet those standards may leave for other schools, and schools not progressing adequately become subject to reorganization. The significance of the law lies less with federal dollar contributions than with the direction it gives to federal, state, and local school spending. It helps codify the movement toward common standards and school accountability. Yet NCLB will not transform American schools overnight. The first scholarly assessment of the new legislation, No Child Left Behind? breaks new ground in the ongoing debate over accountability. Contributors examine the law's origins, the political and social forces that gave it shape, the potential issues that will surface with its implementation, and finally, the law's likely consequences for American education.

State education departments and school districts face an important challenge in implementing a new law that requires disadvantaged students to be held to the same standards as other students. The new requirements come from provisions of the 1994 reauthorization of Title I, the largest federal effort in precollegiate education, which provides aid to "level the field" for disadvantaged students. Testing, Teaching, and Learning is written to help states and school districts comply with the new law, offering guidance for designing and implementing assessment and accountability systems. This book examines standards-based education reform and reviews the research on student assessment, focusing on the needs of disadvantaged students covered by Title I. With examples of states and districts that have track records in new systems, the committee develops a practical "decision framework" for education officials. The book explores how best to design assessment and accountability systems that support high levels of student learning and to work toward continuous improvement. Testing, Teaching, and Learning will be an important tool for all involved in educating disadvantaged studentsâ€"state and local administrators and classroom teachers.

Scholars from history, economics, political science, and psychology describe the present state of school accountability, how it evolved, how it succeeded and failed, and how it can be improved. They review the history behind the ongoing conflict between educators and policymakers over accountability and testing, describe various accountability schemes, and analyze the costs of accountability. Case studies of three states with strong school systems compare how accountability works in practice. Evers is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. Annotation (c)2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

The Essential School Board Book highlights effective practices that are common to high-functioning boards around the country--boards that are working successfully with their superintendents and communities to improve teaching and learning.

Educational Accountability: International perspectives on challenges and possibilities for school leadership provides an opportunity to assess, reflect on, and discuss current issues surrounding accountability policies in education from around the globe and the implications they hold for school leadership. It addresses the global trend of accountability policies expanding in scope to include the education profession as well as the increasing incidence of international policy borrowing, brought on chiefly by globalisation. Specific case studies offer a contextual examination of the theory, policy and practice of accountability and an inspection of their influence on school leadership. Cases are intentionally juxtaposed to provide a broad perspective of regional and cultural similarities and departures, and are arranged to reflect the diasporic Chinese, Anglo, European, and Hispanic societies. Bringing together a number of highly regarded experts within the field, the book cultivates a global perspective on the challenges and possibilities for school leaders to foster school effectiveness and improvement. Educational Accountability should be key reading for researchers, policy makers, and current and future school leaders.

Accountability, autonomy and choice are now the watchwords of education reformers around the globe. This book presents new evidence from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) test on whether students perform better in school systems with such institutional measures in place. It also provides a theoretical framework for considering these reforms and summarizes previous international evidence. The results confirm that various policies promoting accountability, autonomy and choice are strongly associated with higher achievement for students from both disadvantaged and advantaged backgrounds. In particular, choice through public funding for private schools is associated with both higher performance overall and higher equality of opportunity. Providing detailed and rich facets of different forms of accountability, autonomy and choice, this book is unique in its empirically based and internationally oriented treatment of this up-to-date policy topic. It will be of great interest to academics, policy-makers and practitioners, as well as students in education policy and in the economics of education.