No Child Left Behind

Updated Sept. 19, 2011

Click here for a more recent version of Education Week’s primer of No Child Left Behind (updated 2015).

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, signed into law by President Bush on Jan. 8, 2002, was a reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the central federal law in pre-collegiate education. The ESEA, first enacted in 1965 and previously reauthorized in 1994, encompasses Title I, the federal government's flagship aid program for disadvantaged students.

Coming at a time of wide public concern about the state of education, the NCLB legislation set in place requirements that...