(for more on the law, read the Wikipedia article here)
The “No Child Left Behind” Act (2002) (NCLB Act) is a very ambitious attempt on the part of the federal government under George W. Bush to improve the quality of education, especially public education, in the US. As Paul Tough said in an article in the New York Times in Nov 2006,
When the law took effect, at the beginning of 2002, official Washington was preoccupied with foreign affairs, and many people in government, and many outside it too, including the educators most affected by the legislation, seemed slow to take notice of its most revolutionary provision: a pledge to eliminate, in just 12 years, the achievement gap between black and white students, and the one between poor and middle-class students. By 2014, the president vowed, African-American, Hispanic and poor children, all of whom were at the time scoring well below their white counterparts and those in the middle class on standardized tests, would not only catch up with the rest of the nation; they would also reach 100 percent proficiency in both math and reading. It was a startling commitment, and it made the promise in the law’s title a literal one: the federal government would not allow a single American child to be educated to less than that high standard. [Paul Tough, New York Times, November 26, 2006)
When it was enacted, the law had enormous bipartisan support in both Houses of Congress. Legislators of both major parties agreed that the educational system(s) in the US was/were failing to provide sufficient resources either for pupils or for society, and that the federal government should take significant action to change the situation.
The law contains a number of provisions of the "carrot and stick" variety, requiring states and even particular school districts or schools within states to achieve specified objectives on pain of losing funding or even closing. One of the most controversial provisions of the law (at least in professional educational circles) is that which requires that pupils be tested at various grade levels to determine if their performance actually has improved. If a school is not able to demonstrate that its pupils have reached new standards, it may be deprived of federal funds or even closed outright. This of course puts considerable pressure on teachers and administrators to try to insure that their young charges will be up to the demands of the tests.
Several kinds of objections have been raised, including notably