Accountability simply means that schools are held accountable for the academic achievement of their students. In an effort to improve the academic achievement of all students in America, President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind act in January of 2002 to be the 1st federal low that hold all schools accountable for the performance of their students. Since its existence the No Child Left Behind act has created a huge controversy between supporters who believe that this low will increase the quality of education in public schools because schools will be required to implement scientifically based research practices and show clear results of students progress every year, and opponents who think holding schools responsible on the performance of their students through annual testing measures will open the door for dishonesty in many different ways like manipulating the tests results in order to avoid any penalties that may include cutting resources from schools that fail to meet the national or state standards.
Accountability proponents
The supporters of No Child Left Behind Act are usually those who emphasize on the accountability, they think schools must be responsible in making sure that every student is learning and they believe that it will guarantee the improvement of students achievement. In the political race for the white house “republican Mitt Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, said he supports No Child Left Behind’s focus on using tests and standards to measure student performance, we allow states now to test our kids and see how well they are doing” (Saunders & Trimble, 2007). The idea of accountability in No Child Left Behind Act is to force states to set learning standards and measure school performance in order to insure that all ...