Over the past 10 years, responding both to federal legislation (e.g., the Elementary and Secondary Education act) and local pressure to improve learning, states have been developing or amending their accountability systems. Virtually every state now has standards for student learning, most have aligned student assessment programs with those standards, and many are currently developing data collection and reporting systems to support their accountability decision making. To meet the requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act, states have modified or developed accountability systems to measure schools and districts via a status model of accountability (adequate yearly progress, or AYP).

Accountability under NCLB

• Statewide Educational Accountability under the NCLB Act—A Report on 2005 Amendments to State Plans
• Revisiting Statewide Educational Accountability Under NCLB: A Summary of State Requests in 2003-04 for Amendments to State Accountability Plans
• A Framework for Examining Validity in State Accountability Systems, Ellen Forte Fast and Steve Hebbler with ASR-CAS Joint Study Group on Validity in Accountability Systems, and Executive Summary, 2004
• Statewide Educational Accountability under NCLB: Central Issues Arising from an Examination of State Accountability Workbooks for 2002-03 and U.S. Department of Education Reviews under the No Child Left Behind Act
• Making Valid and Reliable Decisions in Determining Adequate Yearly Progress (Joint CAS and ASR Publication), and Summary, 2003
• Designing School Accountability Systems: Towards a Framework and Process, 2002

The intent of the NCLB legislation, and AYP, is to steadily improve states’ focus on student and school performance. While AYP has served many states, some states are looking beyond AYP to models that may even further improve the validity and reliability of their systems (e.g., growth and value-added models). To help states as they grapple with status (AYP), growth, and other accountability models the following resources have been collected and sorted by type. As more resources become available, they will be placed on this site.

Growth Models

• Policymakers’ Guide to Growth Models for School Accountability: How Do Accountability Models Differ? 2005
• Brain Trust on Growth Models, November 2004
• Use of Growth Models in School Accountability, Memo to Chief State School Officers, March 2005
  
  This memo clarifies some of the existing confusion about what growth models are and what they are not. It discusses growth models in relation to status and improvement models and summarizes the following:
  • types of growth models and their purpose(s)
  • the advantages and disadvantages of growth models
  • challenges to implementation and resource requirements;
  • use of growth models under NCLB
  • policy questions that may shape a state decision regarding the use of growth models

Links to Other Web Resources

• CRESST
• Center for Assessment
• U.S. Department of Education

Project Staff
Rolf K. Blank, Director of Education Indicators, rolfb@ccsso.org
Andra Williams, Senior Project Associate, Education Indicators, andraw@ccsso.org
Carla Toye, Project Associate, Education Indicators, carlat@ccsso.org