Finding a Common Yardstick: Implementing a National Student Assessment and School Accountability Plan Through State-Federal Collaboration

This paper outlines a cooperative governance scheme between the states and the federal government that will be used to develop a national student assessment program for public K-12 education. The proposed structure is based upon theories of democratic experimentalism and policy diffusion. The proposal is aimed at addressing the current problems in the No Child Left Behind Act, which include the interstate disparities in education quality, the narrowing of school curricula, the failure to test appropriate subjects, and the invalidity of test results. This is issue is timely because of the upcoming reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act and recent teacher performance-pay proposals, which rely on test scores in determining teacher pay.