No Child Left Behind

No Child Left Behind (NCLB), U.S. federal law aimed at improving public primary and secondary schools, and thus student performance, via increased accountability for schools, school districts, and states. The act was passed by Congress with bipartisan support in December 2001 and signed into law by Pres. George W. Bush in January 2002.

NCLB introduced significant changes in the curriculum of public primary and secondary schools in the United States and dramatically increased federal regulation of state school systems. Under the law, states were required to administer yearly tests of the reading and mathematics skills of public school students and to demonstrate adequate progress toward raising the scores of all students to a level defined as “proficient” or higher by 2014. Teachers were also required to meet higher standards for certification. Schools that failed to meet their goals would be subject to gradually increasing sanctions, eventually including replacement of staff or closure.

Supporters of NCLB cited its initial success in increasing the test scores of minority students, who historically performed at lower levels than white students. Indeed, Bush in the 2000 presidential campaign had touted the proposed law as a remedy for what he called “the soft bigotry of low expectations” faced by the children of minorities. Critics, however, complained that the federal government was not providing enough funding to implement the law’s requirements and that it had usurped the states’ traditional control of education as provided for in the Constitution. Moreover, they charged that the law was actually eroding the quality of education by forcing schools to “teach to the test” or to lower standards of proficiency while neglecting other parts of the curriculum, such as history, social science, and art. Following unsuccessful efforts in Congress to remove the 2014 proficiency deadline from NCLB, the Barack Obama administration accepted applications for waivers of the deadline in 2011. The following year waivers were granted to states that had reformed their academic standards and established plans for improving poorly performing schools and for evaluating the effectiveness of teachers and principals.

In 2015 Obama signed into law the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which rescinded several of the most-unpopular provisions of NCLB. Under the new law, for example, states were still required to administer standardized federal tests but had greater latitude in determining how and when such tests would be given. States were also permitted to include other measures of student and school performance in their accountability systems within broad federal guidelines. ESSA encouraged, but did not require, states to develop their own teacher-evaluation systems and eliminated NCLB’s requirement that teachers in core subjects be “highly qualified.” It also permitted school districts to design their own remedies for improving poorly performing schools with technical assistance from the states.