The Center on Education Policy (CEP) released today the report “Mining the Opportunities in ‘Differentiated Accountability’: Lessons from the No Child Left Behind Pilots in Four States.” This reeport is one part of CEP’s broader ongoing study of school restructuring under NCLB.
The four states used flexibility from federal education rules to develop new and diverse strategies to help their lowest performing schools.
Several common themes emerging from these states’ pilot programs.
1. All four states moved away from NCLB labels for schools that fail to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) for two consecutive years and instead opted for fewer labels and their own terminology for struggling schools.
2. All four states also put more focus on schools and districts to use data to inform instruction and other decisions.
3. All states created opportunities for on-site monitoring of at least some of their most academically needy schools.
The report says that these strategies shed light on innovations likely included in the reautherization of the federal law.
Center on Education Policy. Mining the Opportunities in “Differentiated Accountability”: Lessons from the No Child Left Behind Pilots in Four States, Press release, September 3, 2009.