Breaking from the government's traditionally limited role in the daily lives of American school children, NCLB placed specific demands on states and school districts forcing them to hold schools accountable for failing students, requiring them to monitor student progress annually or face consequences, mandating tougher hiring practices for teachers, and, at it's core, instituting penalties for schools that failed to improve.

The act is the latest revision of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 -- the first federal education law developed as part of President Johnson's "war on poverty" -- to provide significant levels of funding to schools.

In the beginning, ESEA allocated $1 billion a year to help subsidize schools with high numbers of low-income students. It funded Head Start, a preschool program that helped poor children prepare for first grade and later budgeted an estimated $11 billion to $13 billion a year to help kindergarten through 12th grade schools in poor communities. The provisions of the law also included funds for professional development for teachers and programs designed to increase parent involvement.

"It will offer new hope to tens of thousands of youngsters who need attention before they ever enroll in the first grade," President Johnson said when the bill passed. The bill would help "5 million children of poor families overcome their greatest barrier to progress: poverty," he vowed, according to a chapter in the forthcoming book, "History of Education: Selected Moments of the 20th Century," by history of education professor Daniel Schugurensky of the University of Toronto.

ESEA served as the foundation for federal funding of public schools for almost 30 years and, its most far reaching program -- Title I: Aid to Disadvantaged Children -- earmarked $8 billion a year to special education and impoverished and homeless children.

Despite funneling federal money to schools, ESEA adhered to the historic paradigm of a limited government involvement in local schools and left the responsibility of managing public education to the individual states. Under the 1965 law, states created academic standards and assessed student progress but were not held accountable by the federal government for the results, according to U.S. Department of Education officials.

"Prior to No Child Left Behind, [states] were required to report student performance but they were not being required to hold their schools accountable based on subgroup performance," Darla Marburger, deputy assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Education, told the Online NewsHour. "States had accountability plans but those accountability plans did not necessarily have a focus on having all students proficient."

In the classroom, ESEA required the Department of Education to administer the National Assessment of Educational Progress test, an assessment of fourth, eighth and 12th graders from randomly chosen schools -- both public and private -- across the country. The test, commonly referred to as "the nation's report card," sought to give lawmakers a measure of national achievement by subgroups, such as female and Hispanic students, but did not assess all the nation's schools.

Major disparities between the reading and math scores of students in economically disadvantaged school districts and the scores of students in more affluent communities raised concerns, and led to a revision of the law in 1994 by the Clinton administration, resulting in the Improving America's Schools Act.

IASA increased school funding to cover additional programs for disadvantaged students and required states to increase the number of student assessment tests to once in grades 3-5, 6-9 and 10-12, according to Marburger. Under the law, states were asked to impose their own standardized test requirements for disadvantaged students, who, under the previous law, did not have to be tested, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Despite what lawmakers hoped would be a turnaround in academic proficiency under IASA, NAEP scores continued to show a wide achievement gap by race and socio-economic status. While some schools and districts took pains to ensure their students passed progress tests, others did not.

"In attempting to account for the differences of 15,000 local districts and 40 million public students, state and local districts created a diverse array of policies and programs," the National Conference of State Legislatures reported in 2003. "It became apparent that some states, districts and schools were moving faster and further in implementing standards-based reforms than were others."

In 1998, only 60 percent of fourth graders performed at or above the "basic" level of NAEP and only 30 percent of eighth graders and 40 percent of the nation's 12th graders scored at or above the "proficient" or average level, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

The same year, the test still showed major performance gaps between white students who scored higher on the tests and black, Hispanic and American Indian students.

President Bush's Education Proposal
As part of his bid for office in 1999, presidential hopeful George Bush, then governor of Texas, promised Americans an overhaul of the nation's schools. At that time, studies showed that both working class and suburban voters considered education a top priority.

Mr. Bush proposed college savings accounts and deductions, pouring more funds into early childhood education and supported standardized tests to measure school performance and accountability.

"I believe that measurement is the cornerstone to reform and measurement is the cornerstone to making sure children learn. And I am going to ask the Congress to pass a bill that says in return for receipt of federal money and in return for flexibility, for the federal dollars you receive, you must show us ... you must show the nation, you must show the people in your area whether or not children can read, write, and add and subtract," the presidential candidate said in 2000.

"If they can, there will be rewards. If they can't, there must be a final moment of consequence in order for the accountability systems to mean anything. Instead of continuing to subsidize mediocrity after a reasonable period of time, then parents will have a different choice with the federal money."

The No Child Left Behind Act, signed by President Bush on Jan. 8, 2002, initially received praise from Republicans and Democrats alike.

"[W]e understand now that there are some basic tools that have to be put in place so that we give those children who are among the most disadvantaged in our country, who go to school in some of the poorer schools that they, in fact, get a very real opportunity in education," Rep. George Miller of California, the top Democrat on the House Education and Workforce Committee, told the NewsHour in 2001.

The act initiated a coordination of state and federal policy with the goal of improving teachers and students by penalizing schools whose standardized test scores did not improve rapidly enough.

Since its passage, however, some Republicans and Democrats who initially supported the bill have joined critics who condemn the law for imposing unrealistic expectations on schools and failing to provide sufficient funds to make the required improvements. To date, at least 10 state legislatures have explored rolling back parts of the law, and educators in Maine, Utah and Connecticut have taken legal steps to try to exempt themselves from some of the act's provisions.

-- By Kristina Nwazota, Online NewsHour