As states implement and refine systems for measuring progress under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), parents, teachers, school officials, and policymakers have raised many questions and concerns about what the law requires. This guide is an effort to summarize the accountability requirements of Title I of the No Child Left Behind Act and to clear up some of the most common misconceptions.

The Overall Bargain
By participating in Title I - a voluntary federal program that provides more than $12 billion per year to participating states to help educate low-income children - states agree to commit themselves to the goal of bringing all students to proficiency in language arts and math by 2014. In order to tell whether schools and districts are on-track to meet that goal, each state sets benchmark goals to measure whether schools and districts are making “Adequate Yearly Progress” (AYP) toward teaching all students what they need to know. While this report speaks in terms of school-level accountability, the same basic rules apply in determining whether school districts have made AYP.

In the past, states had complete freedom in defining progress under Title I however they saw fit. But many states fell down on the job. Some set goals so modest that it would have taken more than a hundred years to see meaningful progress; one even defined “progress” as not falling backward very far. In addition, many failed to measure and report the achievement of low-income and minority students.

Accordingly, when Congress passed NCLB, it made the accountability provisions both clearer and stronger. The AYP provisions in NCLB set a new standard for defining success. Schools are now expected to meet clearly defined goals for teaching all students to state standards.

• Clearly defined goals: To ensure that all schools are on-target for teaching kids up to state standards, each state sets specific benchmark goals for the percentage of students in each school that are expected to demonstrate proficiency on state tests in language arts and math. These goals are raised over time.
  
  
• All students: Schools are accountable for overall student achievement and for the achievement of low-income students, students from each major racial and ethnic group, limited-English proficient students, and students with disabilities. Old accountability systems allowed schools and districts to be deemed successful even while groups of students - often low-income and minority students - were not getting the education they deserved. Under NCLB, if a school doesn’t make AYP for one of these groups, it doesn’t make AYP.

These are ambitious goals. To reach them, public education will have to change the way it does business. But early evidence from states at the forefront of implementing rigorous accountability and instructional support systems demonstrates beyond any reasonable doubt that public schools are capable of meeting the expectations in the law.

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The ABCs of "AYP": Raising Achievement for All Students. Updated Summer 2004. 14 Nov. 2006 <http://www2.edtrust.org/NR/rdonlyres/37B8652D-84F4-4FA1-AA8D-319EAD5A6D89/0/ABCAYP.PDF>.