Growing Up with No Child Left Behind: An Initial Assessment of the Understanding of College Students’ Knowledge of Accountability Testing

Anna Zilberberg, Robin D. Anderson, Peter J. Swerdzewski, Sara J. Finney and Kimberly R. Marsh   |    Volume Seven  |   

Despite the extensive testing for federal accountability mandates, college students’ understanding of federal accountability testing (e.g., No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, Spellings) has not been examined, resulting in a lack of knowledge regarding how such understanding (or lack thereof) impacts college students’ behavior on accountability tests in higher education contexts. This study explores college students’ understanding and misconceptions of federal accountability testing in K-12. To this end, we crafted nine multiple choice items with four distracters and piloted these items with two college student samples. The results indicated that college students tend to be moderately confident in their responses regardless of the accuracy of the response. These findings imply that educating students on the purpose and process of accountability testing will require not only imparting correct information, but also debunking misconceptions.

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