Accountability-assessment under No Child Left Behind: Agenda, practice, and future

Abstract

The push for educational reform seems to be ubiquitous. For example, educational reform efforts have been documented in Australia (Brindley, 2001), Canada (Klinger, DeLuca, & Miller, 2008), Israel (Shohamy, 2001), the UK (Broadfoot, 1996), Germany (Rupp & Vock, 2007), and the USA (Wixson et al., 2003; Chalhoub-Deville, 2009a). Political rhetoric aimed at reform often seeks to underscore that education lies at the heart of economic development, international competitiveness, and social harmony (Haertel & Herman, 2005). The demand for accountability, however, which requires states to monitor and report achievement of all students, including English language learners (ELLs), and which entails a punitive system of sanctions for schools and educators based on student performance (defined in large part by test scores) is unprecedented, at least in the USA. Increasingly educational reform efforts in the USA have mandated the use of standardized tests and expanded a system of rewards/sanctions associated with test results. As Linn (2005) observes, ‘[i]n the 1960s ... attempts to use tests for school accountability generally failed to be approved ... In the following two decades, states moved toward statewide testing programs that had higher stakes initially for students and later for schools and educators’ (p. 2). As we stated in a previous publication,

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