California’s Public Schools Accountability Act
The primary goal of California’s accountability system is to measure and help improve the academic achievement of California’s 6.3 million public school students who are enrolled in nearly 10,000 schools in more than 1,000 local educational agencies. California’s content standards, describing the knowledge and skills that students should master at each grade level, are among the most rigorous in the nation. California has designed an equally rigorous growth model of accountability to measure the academic growth of a school based on how much student achievement improves. The growth model acknowledges the reality that not all schools start at the same place and that some can subsequently take longer to reach the final goal.1
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Footnote
1Jack O’Connell, “A California Perspective on Growth Models and Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP).” Written testimony submitted to the Aspen Institute—Commission on No Child Left Behind, May 22, 2006.