After Four Years, NCLB Impact Seen as Positive and Negative

Washington

After its fourth year in practice, the federal No Child Left Behind Act is changing the way schools and districts provide instruction—for better and for worse, concludes a wide-ranging study released today.

The report, conducted by the Center on Education Policy, a Washington-based research organization that tracks implementation of the federal law, found that schools and districts are better aligning instruction and state standards, that test scores are rising, and that the number of schools labeled “in need of improvement” is holding steady.

But it also found that most districts examined are taking time away from studies of some subjects such as science, social studies, and art in order to focus on the subjects that the federal education law emphasizes,...