Earning Industry-Recognized Credentials in High School: Exploring Research and Policy Issues

The era of school accountability is upon us. In order to address past inequities and to ensure future achievement of minimum standards, the federalImproving America's Schools Act of 1994expected states to establish academic content and performance standards, and to implement assessments that measured student achievement against these standards. By the time the U.S. Congress passed theNo Child Left Behind Act of 2001,which called for comprehensive accountability systems in public schools, all of the 50 states already had some sort of assessment system for their K-12 schools (Goertz, Duffy, & Carlson Le Floch, 2001).