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Measuring Academic Proficiency Under the No Child Left Behind Act: Implications for Educational Equity

The University of California, Irvine, Department of Education, 2001 Berkeley Place, Irvine, CA 92697; jamesk{at}uci.edu. His research interests include federal education policy and the use of experimental methods to assess the effectiveness of compensatory education programs.

Gail L. Sunderman, A Senior Research Associate

K–12 education for the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University, 125 Mt. Auburn Street, Cambridge, MA 02138; glsunderman{at}yahoo.com. Her research focuses on educational policy and politics and urban school reform, including the development of education policy and the impact of policy on the educational opportunities for at-risk students

The accountability requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 place high-poverty schools and racially diverse schools at a disadvantage because they rely on mean proficiency scores and require all subgroups to meet the same goals for accountability. In this article, student achievement data from six states are used to highlight differences in the demographic characteristics of schools identified as needing improvement and schools meeting the federal adequate yearly progress requirements. School-level data from Virginia and California are used to illustrate that these differences arise both from the selection bias inherent in using mean proficiency scores and from rules that require students in racially diverse schools to meet multiple performance targets. The authors suggest alternatives for the design of accountability systems that include using multiple measures of student achievement, factoring in student improvement on achievement tests in reading and mathematics, and incorporating state accountability ratings of school performance.

Educational Researcher, Vol. 34, No. 8, 3-13 (2005)
DOI: 10.3102/0013189X034008003


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