The No Child Left Behind Act: Accountability, High-Stakes Testing, and Roles for Sociologists

Abstract

Central to sociology is the assumption that virtually all forms of social action and public policies have unanticipated consequences for their actors and social systems. As sociologists, we seek to explore these unanticipated consequences and delineate how they will affect people, policies, and practices. This essay focuses on the unanticipated consequences of the assessment and accountability mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001. Here, I suggest ways for sociologists to play significant roles in the states' implementation of their assessment and accountability systems. The key components of NCLB are not new (Mazzeo 2001), since the assessment of students is traceable to the post-Civil War era, and school accountability followed the publication of A Nation at Risk (National Commission on Excellence in Education

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