Test scores were supposed to go up. That was President George W. Bush's goal when he signed into law the education bill known as No Child Left Behind in January 2002. The law requires that grade-school kids take standardized math and reading tests. Each school is also graded on how well or poorly its students perform on the tests.
Last week, the nation got its first report card to measure the law's effect. The good news is that math scores for grades 4 and 8 were up. But reading scores were about the same for fourth graders as they were in 2003 and down slightly for eighth graders.
Black and Hispanic students' scores went up a bit in both subjects, another goal of the law. But overall, more than two-thirds of students were not doing as well as they should.