Committee for Economic Development
August 2002
In this 11-page brief, the Committee for Economic Development (CED) examines the No Child Left Behind act's (NCLB) key assessment and accountability provisions and issues surrounding their implementation. The report is a follow-up to a CED tract ("Measuring What Matters: Using Assessment and Accountability to Improve Student Learning") that was released early last year-while NCLB was still being tossed around in Congress and standards and testing systems were more matters of state than federal policy. If NCLB is to improve student learning, the new report says, it must meet a trio of challenges (all pretty obvious yet critical): 1) test results must measure and report student achievement accurately; 2) educators must teach solid content, not just "teach to the test"; and 3) low-performing schools must be given extra assistance. Following an explanation of each challenge is a list of related issues to be monitored and questions that policymakers ought to ask when designing and reforming standards and accountability systems. Download this short, straightforward report in PDF form at www.ced.org/docs/report/report_education_update.pdf or order a copy for $15 plus $3 shipping from CED at 261 Madison Avenue, 25th Floor, New York, NY 10016.
