The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act 1997 (IDEA), No Child Left Behind Act 2001 (NCLB), and Every Child Succeeds Act 2015 (ESSA) has changed how public schools adapt to standards and accountability systems for all students, including students with mild-to-significant cognitive disabilities. Federal legislation has changed the focus of…

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), as amended by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA; P.L. 114-95), specifies the requirements for the state assessments that states must incorporate into their state accountability systems to receive funding under Title I-A. Title IA of the ESEA authorizes aid to local educational agencies (LEAs)…

What is "teaching to the test," and can one detect evidence of this practice in state test scores? This paper unpacks this concept and empirically investigates one variant of it by analyzing test item--level data from three states' mathematics and reading tests. We show that NCLB-era state tests predictably emphasized some state…

Regardless of what one thinks of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the current national education legislation has demonstrated the power and potential of learning standards linked with systems of accountability to influence classroom experiences. Unfortunately, the changes promoted by the legislation have tied the professional hands and suppressed the…

This research study examined the role of critical pedagogical teachers within the education system. Public school teachers in the past ten years have been placed in a vulnerable position due in part to the high stakes testing within the federally mandated No Child Left Behind Act of 2002. Classroom teachers are instructed by school administration…

The purpose of this study was to explore and reveal the process behind how teachers that administer standards-based tests implement instructional practices in the classroom according to the accountability measures of NCLB. The study revealed how teachers in two different school settings prepared their students for the yearly standardized test. In…

This study explored the effects of high-stakes testing and accountability on the fundamental practices associated with middle school philosophy. Participants were middle school educators, including administrators and teachers, from Pennsylvania middle schools. An online survey was used to collect data for this study. The survey addressed the…

The United States federal government, through the No Child Left Behind Act, is holding schools accountable for students' proficiency on academic standards. However, standards-based curriculum and instruction, along with school-based support and remediation programs, are not enough to help 100 percent of students to reach proficiency. It is…

Teachers typically receive the brunt of the criticism for poor performance on large-scale standardized tests. In order to stave off this criticism, some teachers have begun to provide instruction that utilizes actual or cloned items from these high-stakes tests. Such teaching to the test rarely helps learning and has a detrimental effect on the…