NCLB’s Lost Decade Report
NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND 10TH ANNIVERSARY REPORT
NCLB’s Lost Decade for Educational Progress:
What Can We Learn from this Policy Failure?
By Lisa Guisbond with Monty Neill and Bob Schaeffer
January 2012
The federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law failed badly in terms of its own goals, leading to a decade of educational stagnation, according to FairTest’s report marking NCLB’s tenth anniversary.
Among the report’s major findings:
- NCLB failed to significantly increase average academic performance or to significantly narrow achievement gaps, as measured by the NAEP. U.S. students made greater gains before NCLB became law than after it was implemented.
- NCLB damaged educational quality and equity by narrowing the curriculum in many schools and focusing attention