Making Accountability Work to Improve Student Learning

That No Child Left Behind (NCLB) places unprecedented demands on districts and schools to improve student performance is trite and a truism. That NCLB places unprecedented demands on the design and productive use of accountability systems may be less well appreciated. In this article, I consider how accountability is supposed to work to support the improvement of student learning; how it does work, based on available research evidence; and finally what might be done to make it work better.