The No Child Left Behind Act is the signal domestic policy initiative of the Bush administration and the most ambitious piece of federal education legislation in at least thirty-five years. Mandating a testing regime to force schools to continually improve student performance, it uses school choice and additional learning resources as sticks and carrots intended to improve low-performing schools and districts. The focus is on improving alternatives to children in low-performing schools.
Here top experts evaluate the potential and the problems of NCLB in its initial stages of implementation. This first look provides valuable insights, offering lessons crucial to understanding this dramatic change in American education.
Frederick M. Hess is a resident scholar and director of education policy studies at AEI.
Chester E. Finn is senior fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution.
In Prices, Poverty, and Inequality: Why Americans Are Better Off Than You Think, Christian Broda (University of Chicago) and David E. Weinstein (Columbia University) argue that adjusting poverty measures reveals that Americans in every income group are substantially better off economically than they were a quarter century ago.
