What Causes Variation in States' Accountability Policies?

Abstract

This article examines the educational conditions and resources, institutional characteristics, and political factors that contribute to shaping states' educational accountability policies. The policies addressed are identification of underperforming schools, state takeover or reconstitution of failing schools, and state power to replace principals and teachers in underperforming schools. The article addresses accountability for schools and educators, rather than high-stakes tests for students, because of the emphases of the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Based on correlations and cross-sectional, logistic regression, the most important predictors of states' accountability policies appear to be National Assessment of Educational Progress NAEP performance, state education agency staff resources, and Democratic party identification. However, the impact of Democratic party identification is reduced when the southern states are excluded. The article concludes with a discussion of directions for further quantitative and qualitative research, as well as predictions of how NCLB is likely to affect states' accountability policies.