No Child Left Behind (NCLB) is a federal education law that was passed in 2001 with the laudable but challenging goal of closing the achievement gap between minority and white students and improving academic achievement among all students. To that end, NCLB has held states, school districts, and individual schools to impossibly high standards of accountability for the academic performance of their students. The law requires that students are regularly assessed in reading and math, often in the form of standardized testing, and that their performance on these assessments be used as a measure of the school's educational quality. NCLB expired in 2007 and is up for reauthorization. In the past year, Congress has rigorously examined the law during a lengthy reauthorization attempt that has not yielded progress. Narrowing curriculums and a virtually unchanged achievement gap show that the ambitious law has serious flaws. Some argue for fundamental changes, others prefer reworking current provisions, and still others would rather scrap the law altogether and start anew. As a result, reauthorization in 2008 seems unlikely. As Congress fails to make any real progress, students, teachers, and parents across the country are left to suffer under the current law. Congress must either pass other effective education legislation or truly commit to resolving the fate of NCLB this year. Otherwise, they will fail our country's young people. (Contains 18 figures and 71 endnotes.) [This paper was written with the assistance of Khin Mai Aung and Margaret Fung.]