Education Commons^™

An Overview Of The Every Student Succeeds Act, Charles J. Russo

Educational Leadership Faculty Publications

Controversial since becoming law in 2002 as the re-authorization of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has been portrayed by critics as federal overreach in education, even as supporters viewed the bill as a necessary reform to improve the academic performance of students in K–12 schools. Regardless, NCLB proved so unwieldy that 43 states and the District of Columbia received waivers from many of its accountability provisions in return for adopting policies favored by the U.S. Department of Education (Layton 2015).

The recent seven-year-overdue re-authorization of the law received widespread bipartisan support …