States vary greatly in their implementation of standards-based accountability under No Child Left Behind, yet little evidence is available to guide policymakers on what attributes of state policy advance more tightly aligned instruction. This study uses survey data and content analyses from the Surveys of Enacted Curriculum to describe elements of state policy that are associated with tighter alignment between teacher-reported instruction and state standards and assessments. The author reports substantial variation on policy attributes across states, with increasing use of power (rewards and sanctions) and low overall consistency between standards and assessments. Several of the policy attributes are related to instructional alignment, with the strongest fit in mathematics.
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