Chapter 4: Exiting School Improvement Sanctions: Accountability, Morale, and the Successful School Turnaround Principal

For the past decade, parents, educators, taxpayers, and policymakers have debated the merits of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the effect its mandated standards-based assessments have had on schools and school districts (Sunderman, Orfield, & Kim, 2006; Valli, Croninger, Chambliss, Graeber, & Buese, 2008). NCLB required a fundamental philosophical shift in the general public’s judgment about what constitutes a good school, moving from appearances (neat classrooms or the amount of books in the library) to academic results (classroom engagement, teacher accountability, and student proficiency). In the NCLB high-stakes testing context, school success has come to be defined as students demonstrating improved proficiency on state-designed end-of-year examinations (Peck & Reitzug, 2013).