Introduction

All parents expect schools to provide quality instruction and subsequently hold students to high standards. But the recent federal legislation, the No Child Left Behind Act, has added a raft of new requirements and new resources to the efforts already underway at the state and local level, resulting in frustration for teachers and school administrators, and confusion for many families trying to ensure success for their children.

In a nutshell, the No Child Left Behind Act is a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the major set of regulations that funds and directs public education in the U.S. This new version of ESEA, passed in 2001, seeks to ensure that schools set high standards, improve teaching methods, and promote higher achievement for all students, in particular including students with disabilities, students from disadvantaged backgrounds, and students who do not speak English as their native language. These are easily supported goals, but reaching them is another matter. Consider the following:

• There are 50 different state systems of education in the US and thousands of local school districts
• There are no national standards for curriculum
• There are no national standards defining student success
• There are no uniform standards for training teachers and other school personnel.

Nevertheless, No Child Left Behind requires that all states establish standards for “adequate yearly progress” (referred to as AYP). Most importantly, Congress has established serious sanctions for schools that fail to meet these standards.

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