Legislation, enacted by an increasing number of states in response to No Child Left Behind (NCLB), ushers in new accountability standards with significant implications for administrators and teachers. Educators are facing greater pressures to employ effective strategies for helping students meet curriculum standards and to prove that these…

Explores how schools and community agencies collaborate to meet needs of at-risk youth, focusing on four youth services teams located in two rural Oregon counties. Challenges included loose structure, lack of defined objectives, lack of common understanding of related roles and responsibilities, school leadership burden, time management, need for…

Addresses issues faced by institutions attempting to design school profiles to meet accountability standards. Reports of high-stakes test results can be skewed by choice of statistic type (percent of students passing versus mean scores), sample bias, geographical transients, and omission errors. Administrators must look beyond "common…

Although the New York State reading assessment was aimed at identifying children with extra educational needs, one study shows that the current high-stakes nature of the tests has distorted that intent. Rather than rewarding instructional quality, state accountability profiles often reward questionable instructional practices such as retention in…

Explains assessment's nature and purpose and appropriate classroom conditions for its use. Describes a teaching and learning model for the assessment cycle that includes application of learning targets, purposes, methods, feedback/inference, and documentation and communication of results. Delineates six core principles for quality assessment. (MLH)

Penetrates polarized rhetoric to examine four currently debated questions about high-stakes testing. Reframes certain questions: How can we provide instruction enabling students to score well on such tests without narrowing the curriculum? How can we restructure schools to help all children reach high standards? How can assessments be made more…

Discusses looping, or multiyear assignment of children, as a strategy to ease the retention/social-promotion dilemma. Multiyear assignment gives teachers extra time to bring low-performing students up to grade level and develop stable, caring relationships with students. A suburban Kansas school's successful program is profiled. (24 references)…

"All children can learn" has become a simplistic mantra leading to practices that can be harmful to students and unfair to schools. Unintended consequences include establishing accountability based on state-developed tests, downplaying poor children's need for early intervention, and using punishment to motivate school improvement. (MLH)

Summarizes recent developments in educational adequacy and finance-equity court cases around the country, highlighting the differences and the relationship between traditional finance-equity claims and more recent educational adequacy claims. The most sweeping decision occurred in Alabama; a state trial court will monitor mandated reforms in…

The responsibility for the academic success of our nation's children historically has been shouldered by the school principal. In many school communities today, that accountability has been mandated by state law. The Indiana equivalent of the accountability movement sweeping the nation is Public Law 221 (P.L. 221), which makes the principal solely…