“Texas-style” accountability was once held up as a model of an effective educational accountability system for other states and used as a framework for the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). However, in Leaving Children Behind, Texas-style accountability is called into question as being the only appropriate measure of assessment for all students, particularly Latina/o students. Since the enactment of NCLB in 2002, accountability has increasingly become the new commandment for U.S. public schools. As the largest minority group in Texas (and in the nation), Latino students receive significant research attention regarding their status in the state’s high-stakes accountability system in this edited volume from Angela Valenzuela.

In a captivating and boldly titled series of articles, Valenzuela and other contributing authors analyze the development and implementation of the Texas model of accountability from various perspectives. While the volume is certainly “anti high-stakes testing,” Valenzuela asserts that she and other authors are not “anti-accountability” (p. 19). While they confirm that schools should indisputably be held accountable, the authors question a system of education where high-stakes testing is the center of a state’s accountability framework, especially as it relates to Latino students, immigrants, and English-language learners.

This volume sheds light on outcomes for Latino students through the lenses of various stakeholders in the Texas educational system, challenging the notion that accountability is strictly a process between the student and the test. The authors directly challenge the state’s accountability system with critiques that are political, community oriented, theoretical, and market based.

In chapter 1, Valenzuela provides a portrait of the current accountability system and its players in the state legislature. For example, she documents how the legislative battle for multiple-criteria assessment bills — a set of assessment measures offered as an alternative to high stakes testing — included the unusual White House input of “a no-support opinion” on this proposed legislation. Chapter 2 provides a critique of the current federal accountability legislation designed for English-dominant speakers and calls for a more cautious approach to high-stakes testing when English-language learners are involved. Chapters 3 and 4 address the Texas system’s adverse role on curriculum development, teacher engagement, and student response to grade retention. Chapter 3, “Faking Equity,” presents a case of why the Texas accountability system is not a model for other states by comparing the system’s claims of success to those of Enron, both of which experienced national scandals regarding false documentation and success rates. Chapter 4 presents five decades of research on grade retention, concluding that this method of reform is associated with the increased likelihood that students will drop out of school.

Chapters 5 and 6 offer a multilevel perspective on high-stakes testing in Texas. “Playing to the Logic of the Accountability System” documents the arguments from opposing academic research camps on high-stakes testing and develops an argument for why conclusions on accountability studies diverge when applying top-down or bottom-up analytic approaches. Chapter 6 offers an interesting study on the high-stakes climate in El Paso, capturing how perspectives on the effectiveness of the testing system differ based on position (administrator or teacher) in this West Texas school district. Chapters 7 and 8 also illuminate how the multiple stakeholder presence in a high-stakes environment is not limited to Texas. While chapter 7 analyzes the professional and personal response of bilingual education teachers to Proposition 227, California’s English-only policy, chapter 8 focuses on the testing pathways of bilingual education teacher candidates and documents the numerous testing stages these aspiring teachers — many of whom are Latinas/os — must pass.

Finally, chapters 9 and 10 offer excellent complements to a comprehensive analysis of an accountability movement. Chapter 9 offers an epistemological and theoretical examination of the accountability culture incorporating a Spanish-language derivation definition of the word “accountability.” Chapter 10 reviews the market-incentive and development strategies supported and facilitated by a high-stakes accountability system. The discussion of the notions of “high stakes testing and educational accountability” as social constructions is perceptive and theoretically grounded. Valenzuela’s chapter on privatization is grounded in the unique Texas legislative context and testing market, and she pushes readers to look beyond outcomes of student learning for other incentives to generate support for this particular accountability system.

Leaving Children Behind is a politically and educationally provocative read for today’s testing era. The authors’ voices carry an intense sense of honesty, care, and questioning about accountability politics, pedagogy, and stakeholder motives in Texas as they relate to Latino and other children. Any state with similar systems of educational reform will find this an eye-opening and necessary read. Valenzuela and her selected authors make a compelling case for an examination of high-stakes testing as not just an educational issue but a basic political and democratic one as well.

S.M.F.