The effect of USA: No Child Left Behind

This report from the USA describes findings from the second year of the most comprehensive, intensive, and carefully constructed study to date of trends in student achievement in all 50 states since 2002, the year the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was enacted.

Key points:
- It is not possible to directly relate improvements in student achievement to the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) policy.
- Since 2002, reading and math achievement has gone up in most states according to the percentages of students scoring at the proficient level. Gains tended to be larger at the elementary and middle school grades than at the high school level. Achievement has also risen in most states according to effect sizes.
- In states where sufficient data exists, gaps have narrowed more often than they have widened since 2002, particularly for African American students and low-income students. Gap trends were also largely positive for Latino students, but this finding is less conclusive because in many states the Latino subgroup has changed significantly in size in recent years.On the whole, percentages proficient and effect sizes revealed similar trends of narrowing or widening, although percentages proficient gave a more positive picture of achievement gap trends than effect sizes.