Ending Accountability Loopholes

By George Miller

As the debate over the reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act intensifies, one of the key questions we face is what we can do to improve the law’s accountability provisions. The Bush administration—which views the law as “99.9 percent pure”—favors minimal changes in reauthorization. That’s unfortunate, because—among other problems with the status quo—maintaining it would mean continuing to exclude millions of children from the law’s accountability system.

In its implementation of NCLB, the Bush administration has allowed for enormous loopholes that undermine the goals of the law.

For starters, the administration has permitted states to use large “N-sizes”—up to 200—for reporting on adequate yearly progress,...