No Child Left Behind Litigation

This chapter examines the litigation generated directly in response to No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and focuses on the ways in which courts have addressed NCLB-related claims. It considers case studies of NCLB-related litigation in three major areas: the implementation of NCLB accountability sanctions, the justifiability of student and school performance determinations, and the underlying capacities possessed by various entities to respond to NCLB requirements. In these cases, the courts generally have not been willing to order changes in NCLB's implementation, and the relevant legal frameworks have poorly framed many of the problems facing standards-based reform and accountability policies. Accordingly, several key issues surrounding NCLB's design and implementation have largely remained hidden from judicial analysis, and some major problems facing NCLB that have arisen in the course of litigation have involved issues that courts are not well positioned to address, such as technical aspects of testing systems.