Impact of NCLB

• The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has a goal of all children in the United States being proficient in reading and math by 2014. Since NCLB was passed in 2001, individual schools have been under immense pressure to improve their students’ scores on standardized tests. Schools that perform poorly on standardized tests are shamed and are labeled as failing. In the case that failing schools do not improve fairly quickly, they face the possibility of being shut down. As a result of this pressure to improve the test scores of their students, the schools often increase the math and reading classroom instruction time at the expense of other curriculum such as art, music, and recess.

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