No Child Left Behind has failed.   It has resulted in unequal funding at both the state and federal levels.

This legislation in its original incarnation had many strong points that would have strengthened schools.  However, because No Child Left Behind turned into an unfunded mandate, its practical effect is dramatically different from what was originally intended.  At the local level, No Child Left Behind has not served Illinois or 50th District schools.

As a practical matter, it causes three problems.

1. Meeting the requirements of NCLB costs money, money which hasn’t been provided by the Federal Government, straining individual District budgets.
2. NCLB does inevitably lead to teaching to the tests that measure a school and that school  district performance, rather than teaching to educate students.
3. NCLB can wreak havoc with balancing classroom makeup:  even if all grade levels in a school pass the test, the school can be failed if there is a subgroup within the school, whether ethnic, linguistic, special needs, or otherwise, when the subgroup’s cumulative test scores don’t meet expectations.

The most pernicious aspect of “No Child Left Behind”:  forcing cash poor districts who fail to meet expectations over a period of years to be privatized, thus turning a non-profit public school over to a for-profit corporate entity.  This was never intended, and this is legislation which needs a dramatic overhaul.