High Stakes Accountability

A volume in Research in Education Fiscal Policy and PracticeEdited by Jennifer King Rice University of Maryland and Christopher Roellke Vassar CollegeIn this third volume of Research in Education Fiscal Policy and Practice editors Jennifer KingRice and Christopher Roellke have assembled a diversity of research studies focused on thecurrent policy environment of high stakes accountability and how this context has impactededucators and students at multiple levels of the system. This effort to leverage studentperformance through high stakes reform has accelerated and intensified considerably since the2002 reauthorization of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act commonly referredto as No Child Left Behind (NCLB).In order for high stakes accountability reforms to realize theirstated aims targeted schools must have or acquire the resources and capacity to meet prescribedperformance standards (Hess 1999; Malen & Rice 2005; Mintrop 2003 2004; Wong et al.1999) yet little systematic research has been assembled to document the implications of high stakes accountability systems on theresources and capacity of schools and school systems. This book aims to fill that gap.With this in mind authors were asked to pay specific attention to challenges school systems confront as a result of NCLB and otherhigh stakes reforms. The contributing authors were asked to think of policymakers and practitioners at local state and national levelsas the intended audiences for their work. Our contributors responded with a collection of studies examining the relationship betweenhigh stakes reform and school district staffing the recruitment and distribution of high quality teachers curriculum making and theprovision of supplemental educational services to children. Our book is organized into three sections. The first provides a frameworkfor assessing the impact of high stakes accountability policy on school capacity and also addresses implementation challenges at bothstate and local levels. The second section focuses on the impact of federal and statepolicymaking on teacher staffing and workplace conditions. The final section includes threechapters that provide a range of critiques on federal policymaking including legal challengesto NCLB.