[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Much fanfare accompanied the signing of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) into law in 2002. With bipartisan support, this legislation sought "to ensure that all children have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education and reach, at a minimum, proficiency on challenging state academic achievement standards and state academic assessments" (U.S. Department of Education, n.d., [paragraph]1). One would be hard-pressed to argue against the seemingly well-intentioned goals of ensuring opportunities for all students to be educated and to increase their proficiency. However, as reality has shown, such terms as "proficiency" and "challenging" have varied from state to state, and the results have been largely unimpressive (The Commission on No Child Left Behind, 2007). Further, by focusing on achieving universal minimal proficiency for all students by the 2013-14 school year, NLCB confused high quality with universal "proficiency."
