The 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) increased accountability pressure in U.S. public schools by threatening to impose sanctions on Title-1 schools that failed to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) in consecutive years. Difference-in-difference estimates of the effect of failing AYP in the first year of NCLB on teacher effort in the…

This study examines the impact of high-stakes school accountability, capacity, and resources under NCLB on reading and math achievement outcomes through comparative interrupted time-series analyses of 1990-2009 NAEP state assessment data. Through hierarchical linear modeling latent variable regression with inverse probability of treatment…

This chapter provides an overview of statistical issues arising in work on educational assessment and school accountability, organized around some of the most consequential misunderstandings. The article proceeds via a series of nine vignettes describing misunderstandings of statistical uncertainty in educational assessment and school…