No Child Left Behind

Introduction

On January 8, 2002, President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act into law. No Child Left Behind was a comprehensive, complex, and controversial education law that was passed as a reaction to the low academic achievement, especially reading achievement, exhibited by many public school students in the United States (Cawthon, A60-A92). The law represented an unprecedented increase in the role that the federal government plays in education because the law dramatically increased federal mandates and requirements on states, school districts, and public schools. The NCLB also increased federal funding to states by almost 25% (Fuller, Gesicki, Kang & Wright, 7-15). The law affected all students who attended public schools by requiring states and public schools to be held accountable for improving student achievement in reading and math. Moreover, NCLB required that educators use scientifically based strategies and methods, which represent the primary tools that will allow schools to make meaningful changes in the academic achievement of their students. This entry begins with a brief description of the history of NCLB and describes the major components of the law.

History

No Child Left Behind was the most recent reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965 (Sunderman Kim & Orfield, 22-44). The ESEA was passed as part of President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty. The law appropriated federal money for states to improve educational opportunities for disadvantaged children. Although Congress allocates funds to the ESEA annually, Congress must reauthorize the law every 5 or 6 years.

In 1994, the bill that reauthorized the ESEA was titled the Improving America's Schools Act (IASA). The central purpose of IASA was to implement standards-based education throughout the nation. The IASA created a new framework for the federal role in elementary and secondary education, in which the federal government not only provided aid to schools serving economically disadvantaged students but extended federal support to the states' implementation of local and state standards-based reform. The IASA was based on states' developing challenging academic standards, creating and aligning assessments for all students, holding schools accountable for results, and increasing aid to high-poverty schools.

The 2001 reauthorization of the ESEA was titled NCLB. The passage of NCLB expanded the role of the federal government in public education by holding states, school districts, and schools accountable for producing measurable gains in students' achievement in reading and mathematics. For the first time, the federal government in NCLB began requiring states and school districts to use numerical data to provide evidence of improved student outcomes.

Purpose

The primary purpose of NCLB was to ensure that students in every public school achieve important learning goals while being educated in safe classrooms by well-prepared teachers. To increase student achievement, the law required that school districts (a) assume responsibility for all their students reaching certain goals in reading and math, (b) use scientifically based procedures to teach reading and math, and (c) have highly qualified teachers in all their classrooms. (Kim & Sunderman, 3-13) Furthermore, NCLB required schools to close ...