ABSTRACT

The No Child Left Behind Act is a vast, complex piece of legislation that is having manifold, far-reaching effects. As happens with most sweeping policies (Spillane 2004), the balance of its effects in schools on children and their teachers varies as the law is locally interpreted in states, districts, schools, and classrooms. We have enough scattered systematic evidence and enough anecdotal evidence about the law's effects to suspect that some of those effects may help disadvantaged children, while many will leave their educational situation not significantly better or worse, and some of the law's effects will actively damage the quality of their education.