Little Effect from State Accountability Pressures on Student Achievement under NCLB

Accountability reform has been at the forefront of the domestic policy agenda. In 2015, the House and Senate  passed bills to replace No Child Left Behind (NCLB). In both versions of the bill, the centerpiece of NCLB—identifying failing schools through the standardized testing—remained intact. What remain in contention, however, are  the policy levers that states use to identify and address failing schools. 

As states move to implement their revised accountability plans under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), this study presents new evidence on how increased  state accountability pressures affect student achievement. 

The authors address prior methodological challenges for evaluating NCLB by introducing a new implementation measure of states’ accountability policies from 2003 to 2011  (pre-waiver period). Importantly, the measure describes variation in states’ accountability standards but is inde pendent of school and student population characteristics within each state. 

Using their implementation measure, the authors estimate the causal effects of increasing state accountability pressures on student reading and math performance. 

Overall, they find that increased implementation stringency resulted in small improvements in eighth-grade math achievement but had no effects on fourth-grade math or reading outcomes. 

The study concludes that ratcheting accountability pressures alone is not enough to sustain improvements in student achievement.

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