Curriculum, Assessment, And Accountability in Day Treatment and Residential Schools‪.‬

The demand for increased accountability for schools and school districts has been among the most visible and controversial of the educational reforms undertaken in the United States. Improved student performance on assessments and other important indicators has been at the forefront of national educational policy for well over a decade, and the recent reauthorization of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (No Child Left Behind Act of 2001) has moved the accountability requirements for schools to an even higher level. The dominant feature of today's educational accountability is the emphasis on assessing student performance (Fuhrman, 1999; Heubert & Hauser, 1999; Linn, 2000; Olson, Jones, & Bond, 2001; Thurlow, Nelson, Teelucksingh, & Ysseldyke, 2000) and the logic that it is necessary to test students' knowledge to know whether they have met the content standards. New federal and state accountability systems also focus directly on schools. School-level data, most notably student achievement, are collected and reported publicly statewide, typically on school report cards. In the new systems, performance data are used to sanction of reward individual schools as well as target improvement efforts at the school level (Fuhrman, 1999; Linn, 2000; Olson et al., 2001). Consequences range from public reporting of performance on key indicators to rewards and sanctions. These reports are an almost universal feature of accountability systems.