After the complications with last year's economic stimulus package, people began to truly aknowledge that the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act wasn't going according to plan. (Read the Education Topics blog post from 27 January 2010, or follow this link to see one example). This year, Obama's administration is taking another look at the somewhat infamous 2002 law, as discussed in "Administration pushes to rework No Child Left Behind law." In this article, Washington Post writer Nick Anderson gives a brief overview of some of the changes that may soon go into effect as well as a brief review of some of the issues with the No Child Left Behind law.

One of the most prominent issues with this law is that it punishes schools that do not produce high student scores on standardized tests. The New York Times editorial "A Vital Boost for Education" specifically says that poor and minority schools do not get "a fair share of experienced, qualified teachers." Although the No Child Left Behind law requires states to disperse good teachers into poorer districts, that part of the law had not been effectively enforced as of last year, seven years after the law was put into place. How can poor and minority schools produce high test scores without qualified teachers? Disadvantaged schools should not be punished for lacking resources.

Although Obama's "Race to the Top" program has problems of it's own, it takes the idea that schools that do well should get rewarded from the No Child Left Behind law and leaves out the idea that schools that don't do well should be punished. The "Race to the Top" program is an improvement over No Child Left Behind because it uses funds strictly as a reward for schools that meet federal standards rather than punishing schools that haven't yet recieved the benefits that No Child Left Behind was supposed to provide.