Public schools have long been held accountable for responsible financial management and for compliance with state and federal regulations. Since the late 1990s, however, a new form of school accountability has taken center stage as states have begun holding schools accountable for academic outcomes, usually as measured by scores on standardized tests.

This concept of accountability is part of a broader effort to improve public education through “standards-based” reform. In a standards-based system, holding schools accountable for student performance is one part of a comprehensive set of interlocking and mutually reinforcing policies. In theory if not always in practice, these policies include:

• standards that spell out what students should know and be able to do;
• assessments to measure progress toward those standards;
• strategies for building the capacity of educators to help their students meet higher expectations;
• rewards when students and schools meet or exceed standards; and
• clear consequences when they fail.

States have varied widely in their approach to these reforms and in the extent to which they have carried them through in their testing systems, and in the textbooks and teacher professional development they provide. Up until 2002, they also varied dramatically in their approach to holding schools and school districts accountable. That year, the federal government reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). In the process, it reinforced the concept of standards-based reform and called on states to implement accountability systems based on specific federal guidelines.

This latest version of ESEA, which was originally established in 1965, has been dubbed the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Signed in January 2002 by President George W. Bush, NCLB requires states, if they accept ESEA funding, to have accountability systems that hold schools, school districts, and the state as a whole accountable for improving the academic performance of students. The central provisions include the state administering tests aligned to academic content standards; reporting progress toward the goal of all students performing at a proficient level on those tests; and imposing specific consequences for schools and districts that fail to make “adequate yearly progress.”

Many of the goals of NCLB are consistent with the standards-based accountability system California began implementing in 1999. Both base the evaluation of school performance primarily on the results of standardized testing. Both call for public reporting of a school’s progress based on its students’ performance, and on the performance of subgroups of students within a school. And both use “interventions” to help low-performing schools improve. That said, the two accountability systems use different methods for reporting school performance and measuring success. These dual approaches to accountability have existed side by side in California since 2003, resulting in some mixed messages between the two systems and repeated negotiations between the state and federal government related to accountability regulations and reporting.