No Educator Left Behind is a series providing answers from the U.S. Department of Education to questions about the federal No Child Left Behind Act and how it will affect educators. If you have a question about No Child Left Behind, send an e-mail to Ellen Delisio, and we will submit your question to the Department of Education.

Question:

State assessments sound like they could take a lot of time and effort. What will be gained by them?

U.S. Department of Education:

The point of state assessments is to measure student learning. A key principle of quality management is the importance of measuring what is valued (such as production rates and costs of materials in manufacturing, for example.) Such measures enable an organization to identify where and how to improve operations. In the same manner, if schools and school systems are to continuously improve, they must measure growth in student achievement. After all, the core of all activity in schools and school systems is teaching and learning, and the key question is: Are students learning?

Read previous questions and answers in our No Educator Left Behind archive.