ABSTRACT
The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), requires that the nations public schools be held accountable for achieving high levels of educational proficiency for all students. The considerable public attention directed toward the state accountability systems mandated by NCLB has focused largely on the expansive student assessments required under the federal law and on the high-stakes sanctions applied to schools that consistently fail to meet established performance benchmarks. Often overlooked in these debates has been the fact that, in addition to test scores, state accountability systems must also incorporate at least one other indicator of academic performance. At the secondary education level this additional measure must be the high-school graduation rate.
