Statewide Educational Accountability Under the No Child Left Behind Act: A Report on 2006 Amendments to State Plans. A Summary of State Requests in 2005-06 for Amendments to Their Educational Accountability Systems Under NCLB

This report summarizes requests submitted by states in 2005-06 to amend their educational accountability plans under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001 as well as the related decisions of the U.S. Department of Education (ED). This fourth installment of the Council of Chief State School Officers' (CCSSO's) annual review of changes to States' accountability plans traces a policy path that has been more obscure and convoluted than in past years. The basic structure of this paper parallels that of its predecessors, but emerging inconsistencies in ED's decisions across States and over time have undermined a fundamental assumption underlying the first three reviews. That is, previous amendment decisions no longer represent trustworthy precedents. As with the previous three papers, this paper is primarily based on information provided voluntarily by States to CCSSO. The major issues that formed the 2005-06 accountability context are described in the Introduction. States' amendment requests and, to the extent that they have been detected, ED's responses to these requests are described in Section II of this paper. Brief comments regarding these decisions are provided in Section III along with some conclusions and speculations about what may lie ahead. A timeline of significant events related to state accountability plans under NCLB is included in this report. The following are appended: (1) Acronyms Used in This Paper; and (2) State Educational Accountability Workbook Decisions by the U. S. Department of Education That Changed between 2002 and 2006. (Contains 21 footnotes.) [Funding support for this paper was entirely from member states of the Accountability Systems and Reporting State Collaborative.]