No Child Left Behind

With his signature Thursday, President Barack Obama is setting the nation’s public schools on a sweeping new course of accountability that will change the way teachers are evaluated and how the poorest performing schools are pushed to improve

Those federally mandated math and reading tests will continue, but a sweeping rewrite of the nation’s education law will now give states—not the U.S. government—authority to decide how to use the results in evaluating teachers and schools.

The way the nation’s public schools are evaluated—teachers, students and the schools themselves—is headed for a major makeover, with a sweeping shift from federal to state control over school accountability and student testing.

After years of failed efforts, the House voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to sharply scale back the federal role in American education.

English language learners face a daunting challenge in today’s classrooms, which have an increased focus on written work.