Report: Racial gap narrows, but what did No Child law do?

Gannett and other sources cover the CEP report on student achievement released yesterday, which found that student achievement is basically on the rise in the last five years (i.e. since the enactment of NCLB). They found that gains on state tests are generally in the same direction as gains on state NAEP, but are usually greater than what's found on NAEP. While CEP is careful to say that you can't credit NCLB directly for this, surely some readers of the report will leap to make the causal link between NCLB and rising achievement.

At the briefing someone from AFT asked if the compared trend lines from before NCLB to after NCLB, which they weren't able to do because of the dearth of data pre-2002.

Maria Glod's story ran A2 in the Post.