A new report released by the Center on Education Policy this week examines the trends and progress that each of the 50 states have experienced in educational achievement since the passage of No Child Left Behind in 2001. The report--written by a bi-partisan panel of education experts including both proponents and critics of the law--concludes that since the onset of NCLB, student performance on state assessments has in fact improved in a consistent and significant manner.

Despite this seemingly powerful conclusion, however, the overarching take-home point from the report is caution, which will likely temper the ability of pro-NCLB legislators to point to its findings as evidence that the law is decisively working. For instance, the report's authors are quick to declare that the improvement in student achievement on the state tests cannot be solely be attributed to No Child Left Behind, since any number of additional variables may have had substantial impacts on students in the past five years as well. As the authors write, "It is very difficult, if not impossible, to determine the extent to which these trends in test results have occured because of NCLB."

The report also finds that progress in narrowing academic achievement gaps along socioeconomic and racial lines has been hard to discern. While they find that, "there is more evidence of achievement gaps between groups narrowing since 2002 than of gaps widening," they also submit that "the magnitude of the gaps is often substantial."

Robert Linn, a University of Colorado-Boulder professor and outspoken critic of NCLB who was one of the five panel members who chaired the report, makes another observation about the lack of definitiveness to be drawn from the report. While "improvement" was seen in 37 of 41 states that had three years of longitudinal data in elementary math and in 29 of 41 states in reading, the bar for improvement was set at only one percentage point each year. Largely because of this low bar, Professor Linn observed that "even if you look at all the increases, states would still not be hitting 100 percent by 2014," a goal which NCLB has set.

Another cause for caution is that student scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, commonly referred to as the Nation's Report Card, have essentially remained unchanged in the same time period, leading some to question whether the state test score increases are the result of narrowly-focused "teaching to the test" at the loss of broader skills. One response to this concern is that the curriculum in the schools are aligned (at least in theory) with the state tests but not with NAEP, and so the improvements seen thus far may be absent in the NAEP data because schools are aiming to meet the specific state standards in front of them.

Regardless of all of the yellow flags that supporters and opponents of the law both are citing on the study, the good news is that there is little evidence to support a conclusion that NCLB is actually hurting students in terms of academic achievement. More time is needed before we'll know conclusively whether the law's accountability and standards measures are a positive, but in the meanwhile those concerned about America's youth falling further behind will rest assured that this is likely not the case, at least academically speaking.