Several statewide education systems are in danger of failing to meet higher standards for accountability as required by the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) come fall, according to a nationwide report released June 18.

Although nearly all states have implemented tests that measure students' progress toward clearly defined standards, many still lack the infrastructure necessary to deliver results electronically and store them in multiyear databases for purposes of comparison, the report said.

The report is the first in an annual series on "Testing the Testers," issued by the Princeton Review, a company that specializes in preparing students for high-stakes tests. The firm collected data from every state and the District of Columbia before ranking the testing programs of each. The rankings were based on 25 indicators under four key criteria: alignment with standards, test quality, accessibility of data, and policy or accountability systems. States received scores from 0 to 2 points for each indicator, depending on whether specific standards were met.

According to Steve Hodas, executive vice president for strategic development at the Princeton Review, most states do issue strong, high-quality tests aligned with state standards. But good tests achieve little if states are unable to qualify the results, he said. What's alarming is the number of states that are unprepared to use test scores effectively to improve instruction.

"Issuing a good test is just the beginning," he warned.

For example, the study found that many states do not provide educators, parents, and other stakeholders with informative, easily accessible testing information that can be used to achieve continuous improvement, Hodas said. This includes access to electronic databases, which can add accountability to results.

"Policy and openness are the areas where the rubber really hits the road," he said. "You need to be able to translate the vast amounts of information from these tests into things that you can use. In the past, schools have done almost nothing useful with the data."

Keeping in mind that most states already administer tests aligned with state standards, Hodas said the Princeton Review decided to use a weighted scale during its assessment in which 40 percent of states' scores were derived from the quality of the tests themselves and 60 percent involved policy, accountability, and the openness of records.

Under its policy criterion, the study found 21 states did not distribute test results broken down by student and teacher to educators electronically, and results often were not complied in a way that allowed them to be linked to other state or school databases. According to the report, six states—Minnesota, Tennessee, Vermont, West Virginia, Hawaii, and Iowa—either did not respond to the company's query or do not tabulate test results by teacher and student in any format.