ABSTRACT
With the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001, school accountability is now federal law, and every state in the United States is obligated to assess students in grades 3-8 in reading and mathematics and in three grades in science. Additionally, they are required to evaluate schools on the basis of their aggregate performance on these examinations. In the federal law, schools are evaluated based on whether the school makes adequate yearly progress in a given year. Adequate yearly progress is defined recursively: Every student is expected to be proficient by 2013-2014, which sets an ultimate performance target for that year. Meeting this proficiency target, however, is not sufficient to make adequate yearly progress; schools must meet proficiency targets for each subgroup represented in the school, in each subject tested. Schools that persistently fail to meet these targets are sanctioned, with students offered increased school choice and federal education aid rerouted to other purposes. Eventually, these schools may experience closure or major governance changes.
