The Impact of No Child Left Behind on Student Achievement

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act compelled states to design school-accountability systems based on annual student assessments.The effect of this Federal legislation on the distribution of student achievement is a highly controversial but centrally important question.This study presents evidence on whether NCLB has influenced student achievement based on an analysis of state-level panel data on student test scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).The impact of NCLB is identified using a comparative interrupted time series analysis that relies on comparisons of the test-score changes across states that already had school-accountability policies in place prior to NCLB and those that did not.Our results indicate that NCLB generated statistically significant increases in the average math performance of 4th graders (effect size = 0.22 by 2007) as well as improvements at the lower and top percentiles.There is also evidence of improvements in 8th grade math achievement, particularly among traditionally low-achieving groups and at the lower percentiles.However, we find no evidence that NCLB increased reading achievement in either 4th or 8th grade.