Legacy of No Child Left Behind (ECAP Report‪)‬

Journal Articles TRICK OR TREAT: New Ecology of Education Accountability System in the USA. Jaekyung Lee. Journal of Education Policy, Vol. 25, No. 1 (2010): 73-93. This article describes a study that tracked American states' policy choices under the No Child Left Behind Act and explored their consequences for student achievement. Using the path analysis of relationships among state-level policy input, context, and outcome variables, the study portrayed a Halloween-like "trick-or-treating" game between the federal and state governments in the new ecology of the test-driven education accountability system. States that chose the "trick" path, with a calculative policy negotiation and manipulation strategy, made significant gains on their own state assessments but not on the national assessment. In contrast, states that followed the "treat" path, with a faithful policy implementation for funding strategy, have not yet realized significant gains on either the national or state assessments.