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The United States: School Choice and Test-Based Accountability

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Education Policy Reform Trends in G20 Members

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Abstract

This is an unusual time in the USA for policy concerning primary and secondary education—kindergarten through 12th grade. The forces shaping K-12 policy are remarkably aligned with both major political parties devoted to two fundamental approaches: test-based accountability and school choice. While these lawmakers differ over details, including the proper role of the federal government, there is little disagreement regarding reliance on these basic approaches. While individual states and school districts have embarked on enough different reforms so as to decorate this remarkably aligned political landscape with a variety of interesting gardens worthy of notice, this chapter focuses on explaining the history and current import of the two dominant policies.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See Table 8 at http://www2.census.gov/govs/school/elsec10_sttables.xls, for school year 2009–2010 (most recent data).

  2. 2.

    Notwithstanding the differences between the parties, many of these efforts received substantial bipartisan support.

  3. 3.

    Note that while Title I funding has continued to increase and while this money continues to be spent overwhelmingly on compensatory needs in low-income communities, the policy conditions attached to this spending now emphasize test-based accountability and, to a lesser extent, school choice.

  4. 4.

    Grade retention and exit (diploma) exams are the only major student-level policies arising out of the recent movement for greater reliance on test scores. While not discussed further below, it should be noted that the retention push has been strong in recent years. As a way to address the importance of early reading skills, Florida and other states have adopted test-based grade retention policies. Student with low scores on the third-grade reading assessment must repeat the third grade. In Florida, these retained students are also provided with intensive reading interventions, which complicates attempts to measure the effectiveness of the grade retention itself. But a great deal of other research concludes that retention is not an effective intervention and, in fact, puts students at a substantially greater risk of later dropping out of school (see studies cited in Moreno 2012).

  5. 5.

    This requirement of disaggregated subgroup reporting and accountability was one of the elements of NCLB that brought together Democrats and Republicans.

  6. 6.

    As of July of 2013, eleven states were still operating under the old system, having either not applied for or not been granted a waiver. These include the large states of Texas and California.

  7. 7.

    The focus herein on NCLB’s accountability provisions. It also includes many other elements, including a provision requiring that teachers be “highly qualified” and teach classes within their area of training.

  8. 8.

    Smarter Balanced is using adaptive testing, whereby questions vary depending on a student’s prior answers, as part of this computer-based model.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Education, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, USA

    Kevin G. Welner

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  1. Kevin G. Welner
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Correspondence to Kevin G. Welner .

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  1. Department of International Cooperation, National Institute of Education Sciences, Beijing, People's Republic of China

    Yan Wang

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Welner, K.G. (2013). The United States: School Choice and Test-Based Accountability. In: Wang, Y. (eds) Education Policy Reform Trends in G20 Members. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-38931-3_9

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