How do proficiency-based accountability systems affect inequality in academic achievement? This article reconciles mixed findings in the literature by demonstrating that three factors jointly determine accountability's impact. First, by analyzing student-level data from a large urban school district, we find that when educators face accountability…

Too many American children are segregated into schools without standards, shuffled from grade-to-grade because of their age, regard less of their knowledge. This is discrimination, pure and simple--the soft bigotry of low expectations. And our nation should treat it like other forms of discrimination. We should end it. One size does not fit all…

Central to sociology is the assumption that virtually all forms of social action and public policies have unanticipated consequences for their actors and social systems. Sociologists seek to explore these unanticipated consequences and delineate how they will affect people, policies, and practices. This essay focuses on the unanticipated…

Few educational problems have received more attention than has the failure to ensure that the nation's classrooms are staffed by qualified teachers. Many states have pushed for more-rigorous preservice teacher education, training, and certification standards. Moreover, a host of recruitment initiatives have attempted to increase the supply of…

Now in its third full school year of implementation, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has been drawing praise and blame. It has been praised for its goals of increasing all students' learning, requiring disaggregated data to monitor the progress of major subgroups of students, and having high-quality teachers in all schools. It has been…