Determining whether schools and districts are making adequate yearly progress under the federal No Child Left Behind Act "has evolved into 50 intricate formulas that vary greatly from state to state," according to a recent report by the Center on Education Policy. The report from the Washington-based policy group tracks changes to state…

Over the past decade, the standards movement has come a long way, though the push for accountability has meant different things in different places. In this article, the author reports the effects of standards-based education in student achievement and the improvement of public schools. Though states had already begun setting clear and challenging…

This article presents the details of a conference discussing issues on NCLB implementation. The conference was based on a set of papers that included reviews of NCLB implementation in California, Colorado, Michigan, and New Jersey, as well as in three rural Kentucky districts and 36 big-city districts nationwide. Those analyses found that states…

More special education students are being excluded from federal accountability provisions, driving up the number of public schools able to make adequate yearly progress and raising questions about the pledge to "leave no child behind." To make adequate progress under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, public schools and districts need…

When the US' governors gather in Washington this February 2005 for what is billed as a national education summit on high schools, many will come prepared to talk about initiatives already under way back home. The summit's organizers hope that an "action agenda"--coupled with intensive planning leading up to the meeting--will encourage state…

After years of trying to fix trouble schools one at a time, a number of states are weighing stronger measures for intervening in low-performing school districts. The shift is seen as a response to the federal No Child Left Behind Act. States are turning in a bigger way to district-level strategies, in part because as their own accountability…

This article talks about the approval given by the Education Department to 16 states that requested changes to accountability plans under the No Child Left Behind Act. Federal officials had sent decision letters to these states. Another 31 states are awaiting such letters, although many have received oral approvals or denials. This article…

In this article, the author discusses how England refines its accountability reforms. When the Conservative government crafted the Education Reform Act of 1988, which mandates a national curriculum for England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, as well as national-curriculum tests at ages 7, 11, and 14, schools in England were permitted to secede from…

Just weeks before states release their lists of schools that have not met "adequate yearly progress" targets under the main federal K-12 law, many states are still negotiating with federal officials over changes to their accountability plans designed to reduce those numbers. The federal No Child Left Behind Act, a 2 1/2-year-old revision…

The proportion of public schools' meeting their prescribed achievement targets under the No Child Left Behind Act appears to have fallen slightly in the 2005-06 school year, while the percent classified under the law as needing improvement increased. The trends bear out earlier predictions that schools would find it increasingly hard to show…