PRINCETON, NJ -- More Americans think the No Child Left Behind Act, which has governed federal education grants to public schools for a decade, has made education worse rather than better, by 29% to 16%. Thirty-eight percent say NCLB hasn't made much of a difference, while 17% are not familiar enough with the law to rate it.

The latest results are based on Gallup's annual Work and Education poll, conducted Aug. 9-12. Current views are similar to those from August 2009, when Gallup previously asked this.

Those most likely to have personal insights into how NCLB is playing out in their local schools -- parents of children in kindergarten through grade 12 -- have about the same views on the law as adults without a child in school. Also, perhaps reflecting the broad bipartisan support for NCLB in Congress when it was created, there is no meaningful difference in the public's views of the law by party.

Adults in households earning less than $30,000 a year (22%) are more likely than those in higher-income households (15%) to believe the law has made public education better. In fact, similar to Gallup's findings in 2009, lower-income Americans' views on NCLB are evenly divided, while middle- and upper-income Americans' views are more negative than positive.

Although proposed by George W. Bush in 2001 and cosponsored by prominent Republican and Democratic lawmakers -- including Republican Rep. John Boehner and Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy -- the No Child Left Behind Act has sparked harsh criticism from the political left and right for 10 years. Now, with Republicans and Democrats in Congress unable to agree on terms to extend it, the U.S. Department of Education has excused half of the states from the NCLB mandate to make all students proficient in reading and math by 2014, with 11 more waivers under consideration.

In what could, thus, be the last year that NCLB has much influence on public education, relatively few Americans say they are "very familiar" with the law, but 48% consider themselves "somewhat familiar," and another 20% are "not too familiar." Just 14% say they are not at all familiar or are unsure.

Attitudes toward NCLB are more negative than positive regardless of one's familiarity with the law. Among those very familiar with it, 28% say it has made education better and 48% worse. The figures are 19% vs. 32%, respectively, for those who are somewhat familiar with it, and 10% vs. 24% among those not too familiar.



Bottom Line

After 10 years of debate and seeing how the No Child Left Behind Act works in practice, Americans are slightly more negative than positive about its effect on public education, while the majority either say it has not made much difference, are unsure, or aren't familiar enough with the law to rate it. Such ambivalence probably gives the Obama administration broad political latitude to modify NCLB through executive fiats, such as the recent decision to grant states waivers from meeting the law's key benchmarks. Indeed, that approach is generally consistent with Americans' preference to either eliminate the law or keep it with major revisions, as Gallup found in January 2011. Relatively few Americans at that time, 21%, favored maintaining the law in its original form.

One cautionary note to those seeking to dismantle NCLB could be that lower-income Americans show more support for the law than middle- or upper-income Americans do -- although even lower-income Americans are divided in their views of it.