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The Origins, Evolution, And Effects Of Test Based Accountability: North Carolina And The Nation, 1976-2009, Scott Baker

Summer Workshop on the Comparative History of School Accountability

This paper examines the origins, development, and effects of test based accountability between 1976 and 2009. Using evidence from North Carolina and other southern states to illuminate broader national developments, the paper focuses on three overlapping waves of test based accountability that began in southern states in the 1970s and spread throughout the United States in the decades that followed: 1) the minimum competency movement of the late 1970s and early 1980s, 2) the raising of high school graduation requirements and the implementation of more rigorous high school exit exams in the 1980s and 1990s, and 3) the adoption of …