The No Child Left Behind Act was established by the Bush Administration in 2002. It aims to improve American education by focusing on improving the performance of disadvantaged students while attempting to hold states and schools to greater account. The act requires states to test students and bring all students up to at least a level of "proficient" on those tests. Schools which fail to perform could be required to change their form of governance. The act also requires teachers to reach a level of "highly qualified" in the subject they teach.
The Race to the Top initiative was established following the election of the Obama administration. The program targets four areas for education reform. Participating states must adopt standards and assessments aimed at helping students succeed in college, develop criteria to objectively judge student performance, reward good teacher and administrator performance and improve low performing schools. The $4 billion program provides funds to eligible state governments. In order to obtain the funding states must participate in a peer-reviewed application process.
This Race to the Top initiative is on demonstration in the State of Maryland. Following Maryland's acceptance into the program, state officials have promised significant advances in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) by attempting to place STEM-certified teachers in each school. The state is partnering with leading tech companies such as Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman to encourage students to become engaged in science-oriented careers.
Through passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, more commonly known as the stimulus bill, funding was directed to several American education programs. About $5 billion was slated for early learning programs including Head Start, Early Head Start and special needs funding. More than $48 billion was directed into state-level budgets for teacher funding, assessment and career-ready standards and $30 billion to enable affordable access to college.
Federal education funding programs risk the establishment of a long-term payroll liability to state governments. For example, in a Jan. 30, 2011 editorial, the Wheeling Ohio News-Register opined that the State of Ohio's participation in Race to the Top was being mostly used for salaries and placed new state employees on the state government payroll at a time when Ohio policy leaders were grappling with trying to fill an $8 billion, two-year budget hole.
Opposition to the No Child Left Behind program from the state level has been strong due to the number of federal mandates placed on local school boards. The opposition reached such a strength that as of January of 2011, federal lawmakers were purposing to significantly amend the program to increase local control and concentrate federal focus mostly on the lowest performing school districts. The make-over appeared to include changing the name of the program and attempting to migrate the program away from its reputation as bureaucratic and compliance-heavy.