By Aidan Aybar and Haley McGill

George W Bush introduced the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2002 with the goal “to expand opportunities for American children of all backgrounds and provide all our children with the quality education they deserve while preserving local control” (White House Archives). The NCLB required all schools to test children on their reading and math skills and report results. These results and goals were known as Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP). Children were required to be tested every year from third to eighth grade and they were also tested once in high school. The goal of NCLB was to have all students reach the level of “proficiency” that each state set for itself by 2013-2014. Each state chose what tests to use meaning they were not standardized across the nation. 

If schools did not meet the requirements, the NCLB distributed consequences. “A school that misses AYP two years in a row has to allow students to transfer to a better-performing public school in the same district. If a school misses AYP for three years in a row, it must offer free tutoring. Schools that continue to miss achievement targets could face state intervention. States could “choose to shut these schools down, turn them into charter schools, take them over, or use another, significant turnaround strategy” (Klein). The purpose of these consequences was to encourage schools to stay on track and if they did not meet the consequences, students would end up in better situations. 

The results of the No Child Left Behind Act proved to be less promising. There seemed to be a wide range of results based on the income level of the school district. When comparing the math exams of New York in particular, “[w]hile 86.3 percent of students in rich, or so-called low-need districts scored proficiently, only 28.6 percent did so in Buffalo, 30.1 percent in Syracuse, and 33.1 percent in Rochester” (Herszenhorn). The resources that children have access to seemed to greatly affect their test scores. Additionally, in lower resourced schools, students had much larger class sizes which could have also been a factor in their low test scores (Herszenhorn). 

In his New York Times opinion piece, Sean F Reardon, a Professor of Education and sociology at Stanford, shares a similar sentiment (he wrote his piece in 2013, 11 years after the NCLB was enacted). When analyzing the scores of math and reading standardized tests over 1960-2010, he found that “rich-poor gap in test scores [was] about 40 percent larger [in 2013] than it was 30 years ago” and “the rich now outperform the middle class by as much as the middle class outperform the poor” (Reardon). 

But let’s see what the economic data says about it.

Data Analysis:

Figure 1 depicts total American education expenditure since NCLB was enacted. Figure 2 depicts aggregate data from two data sets. The blue line represents United States government expenditure on education for students who are not Black/African American or Hispanic/Latino and the red line represents the educational expenditure for those students who are Black/African American or Hispanic/Latino.

People who are Black/African American or Hispanic/Latino experience poverty at disproportionately high rates. Hispanic/Latino individuals compose less than 20% of the population while representing nearly 30% of those who live in poverty in the US. Black/African American individuals represent less than 15% of the US population, but over 20% of the population that lives in poverty. White non Hispanic individuals compose almost 60% of the overall population, but only 44% of the population living in poverty. Asian individuals compose over 6% of the population, but less than 5% of the population living in poverty (USCB, “Black Poverty Rate..”). This disproportionate representation of Black/African Americans and Hispanic/Latinos living in poverty is not new. Indeed, the composition of population percentage vs poverty percentage was similar in 2003 (USCB, “Figure 8..”).

Though there exist some limitations, it is clear that race can function as a proxy for socioeconomic status. However, examining race for what it is provides interesting information as well. NCLB sought to target spendings towards previously marginalized groups. Theoretically, it would lead to more funding being devoted to lower achieving schools who had received less funding in the past. Given all this, one would expect that the gap in educational expenditure would have narrowed between 2003-2023. Unfortunately, the data tells a very different story. There was not much change in the gap for the first 5 years, before widening a bit, and in recent years, it has widened substantially more. Spending has increased for demographics that are statistically less likely to be living in poverty, while it is likely those students who live in poverty who would benefit the most from increased government spending. It is possible that there are white students who have benefited greatly from this act – this data would not capture any failure in that regard. However, it is extremely clear that there are in fact children being left behind – Black/African American and Hispanic/Latino students may be worse off in comparison than they were 20 years ago. In spite of the disproportionate amount of these populations living in poverty, NCLB has failed to direct spending towards these students.

Figure 1

 

Figure 2

 

Conclusion:

Introduced by George W. Bush, The No Child Left Behind Act aimed to improve the education system in the United States. By consistently testing children and school, the government tracked Adequate Yearly Progress and if schools did not meet their requirements, they administered consequences. However, the NCLB did not produce the results the government was looking for. Instead, the results varied by income level of the school district, with test scores being significantly lower in poorer districts with fewer resources. Instead of funding being directed towards schools with the most need, white students, typically richer, had more government funding devoted towards their education. Education has the potential to be the great equalizer in this nation. With inequitable implementation of policy like this though, systemic inequities will be allowed to persist and even worsen.

 

Bibliography: 

Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. “Consumer Expenditures on Education by Income Before  Taxes: Lowest 10 Percent (CXUEDUCATNLB1004M).” FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CXUEDUCATNLB1004M. Accessed 7 Mar. 2025.

Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. “Consumer Expenditures on Education by Income Before  Taxes: Second 10 Percent (CXUEDUCATNLB1005M).” FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CXUEDUCATNLB1005M. Accessed 7 Mar. 2025.

Klein, Alyson. “No Child Left Behind: An Overview.” Education Week, 10 Apr. 2015, https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/no-child-left-behind-an-overview/2015/04.

Medina, Jennifer. “Scores on State Math Tests Dip with Districts’ Income.” The New York Times, 12 Oct. 2006, https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/12/nyregion/scores-on-state-math-tests-dip-with-districts-income.html.

“No Child Left Behind.” The White House, George W. Bush Presidential Archives, https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/bushrecord/factsheets/No-Child-Left-Behind.html. Accessed 7 Mar. 2025.

Reardon, Sean F. “No Rich Child Left Behind.” The New York Times, 27 Apr. 2013,  https://archive.nytimes.com/opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/27/no-rich-child-left-behind/.

United States Census Bureau. “Black Poverty Rate Higher in 2022 Than 2021.” United States Census Bureau, 14 Sept. 2023, https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/09/black-poverty-rate.html. Accessed 7 Mar. 2025.

United States Census Bureau. Figure 8: Income Inequality Measures Using  Equivalence-Adjusted Income, 1967 to 2003.

United States Census Bureau, 2004,  https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/2004/demo/p60-226/fig08.jpg. Accessed 7 Mar. 2025.