Congress and the Bush administration are wrestling with proposals to reauthorize the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). While debate has focused on the provisions regarding testing, teacher quality, and identifying schools in need of improvement, little attention has been paid to the law’s ambitious cascade of remedies and sanctions that take effect when schools and districts are deemed persistently failing. These measures include NCLB’s public school choice (that is, the opportunity to attend another school); supplemental educational services, which include free tutoring services offered to low-income students in failing schools; and restructuring requirements, which force low-performing schools to implement major reforms.

In their new book, No Remedy Left Behind: Lessons from a Half-Decade of NCLB (AEI Press, 2007), AEI director of education policy studies Frederick M. Hess and Thomas B. Fordham Foundation president Chester E. Finn Jr. analyze the NCLB remedies and what needs to be done to make them work as intended. Jack Dale, Fairfax County Public Schools superintendent; Dianne Piché, executive director of the Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights; and Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools will join the authors to discuss the lessons learned, what is and is not working, and what this means for the reauthorization and implementation of NCLB.