No Child Left Behind Act

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 received overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress that year, but President George W. Bush did not actually sign the bill into law until January 8, 2002. The act represented a massive effort to reform the nation's educational system. The chief goal of the law is to impose measurable standards on schools and school districts; the belief is that setting high standards and measuring progress against those standards is the best way to achieve high outcomes among students. Considerable emphasis is placed on standardized testing, and any state that fails to meet standards can be denied federal funding for its schools. The overarching goal is for every student to test at grade level by the year 2014.

Since 2002, the No Child Left Behind Act has resulted in significant increases in federal outlays for education. One of the most dramatic increases was for reading instruction, which quadrupled in the five years after the bill became law. The law's supporters point to a number of improvements in student achievement attributable to the law in such areas as reading and math as reflected in standardized tests, specifically the National Assessment of Education Progress. They also point to shrinking achievement gaps between minority and white students. They believe that imposing increased accountability on school districts has reduced the complacency and mismanagement that had infected those districts in which student achievement was low.

The act has not been without its critics. Chief among the criticisms is that it encourages schools to “teach to the test”—that is, to focus on content and teaching styles that enable students to perform well on standardized tests of basic skills to the detriment of more creative aspects of education. According to critics, teachers anticipate the content of the tests and emphasize rote learning at the expense of creative application of content. Other criticisms are that school districts find creative ways to manipulate test data, that schools eliminate elective courses whose content is not tested under the mandates of No Child Left Behind, that no provisions are made to enhance educational opportunities for gifted and talented students, and that the law in essence federalizes education and diminishes local and state control over schools. Some argue that the law has increased racial and class segregation in schools, for it allows students to opt out of low-performing schools—often schools with large minority populations in poor districts—to attend those that meet the law's requirements—often schools with smaller minority populations in more affluent districts.