It is these worries that drive the powerful
“standards/accountability” movement. Among the
movement’s most far-reaching actions has been
the 2001 passing of No Child Left Behind (NCLB),
which made it national policy to hold schools
accountable for eliminating the persistent gaps in
achievement between different groups of children.
With the aim of ensuring educational equity, the
law requires the reporting of scores disaggregated
by student group; that is, reported separately for
the economically disadvantaged, major racial and
ethnic minorities, special education recipients,
and English language learners.17 By requiring the
reporting of achievement by student group and
requiring all groups to make achievement gains
annually, NCLB seeks to make schools accountable
for teaching all their students effectively.
Whether NCLB and similar “accountability”
mandates can deliver that result is hotly debated,
and many critics argue that the mandates have
unintended negative consequences for children,
teachers, and schools, including narrowing the
curriculum and testing too much and in the wrong
ways. Yet the majority of Americans support the
movement’s stated goals,18 among them that all
children should be achieving at high levels.19 This
public support—for the goals, if not the methods—
can be viewed as a demand that educators do
something to improve student achievement and
close the gaps that all agree are damaging many
children’s future prospects and wasting their
potential.
Learning standards and accountability policies
have impinged directly on public education from
grade K and up, and they are of growing relevance
to preschool education, as well. As of 2007, more
than three-quarters of the states had some sort
of early learning standards—that is, standards for
the years before kindergarten—and the remaining
states had begun developing them.20 Head Start
has put in place a “child outcomes framework,”
which identifies learning expectations in eight
domains.21 National reports and public policy statements
have supported the creation of standardsbased
curriculum as part of a broader effort to
build children’s school readiness by improving
teaching and learning in the early years.22 For its
part, NAEYC has position statements defining the
features of high-quality early learning standards,
curriculum, and assessment.23