Last year, the US Department of Education honored the Kilgore School with a Blue Ribbon Award, designating the Cincinnati public elementary school an example of American public education at its best.

Last week, Kilgore got a very different message. The school so recently at the head of the class was informed of its new status as a failure – one of 8,600 public schools in the country judged to be performing so poorly that its students must be allowed to transfer to other schools.

Thus dawns the brave new world of the No Child Left Behind Act, a world in which much of the status quo in public education is about to be turned upside down.

Across the United States, the implications of the law are just starting to be felt at the school level – often, as in the case of Kilgore, in dramatic ways. Principals who, until a few weeks ago, were consumed with closing out another school year, are now struggling to understand the new law's requirements. Some of those with schools on the failing list are now bracing for the possibility that large numbers of their students may head elsewhere when school starts – in some cases, just a few weeks from now.

Even principals with schools not on that list are staring at batteries of new annual tests, more-rigid hiring requirements, and the need to pay fresh attention to struggling subgroups of students.

The new law's advocates call it a wake-up call designed to force accountability and improvement on schools by 2014, when all schools must meet the goal of academic proficiency for every student. The measures, they argue, offer concrete benchmarks for success and immediate options for those in struggling schools. Its detractors are labeling it an unrealistic piece of legislation.

Beyond that debate, however, bewilderment is growing among those on the front lines – principals, superintendents, and teachers – at schools that have struggled hard to make improvements and still are being hit with punitive measures.

"The system will be jolted in the fall, and this is just the first in a series of shocks that will be administered to the public schools," says Jack Jennings, director of the Center on Education Policy in Washington, D.C. "The President and the Congress meant to shock the schools."

Heavy reliance on test scores is just one factor already producing some odd results.

For example, more than 1,400, or about a third, of all Michigan schools are now considered to be failing – though not one school in Arkansas has received that designation. A Kentucky elementary school that boosted its test scores by 20 percent last year is also classified as a failing school on the basis of earlier test results.

A key factor can be that schools must now demonstrate that all children are succeeding. If any one group – from low-income families, minority students, special- education students, or limited-English students – tests poorly for two years, that school is labeled a failure. That principle was applied as part of the Texas school reform initiative, and many applaud it as a tough but fair method of policing a system that tends to favor the affluent.

But the speed with which these sanctions are moving into place is one of the touchiest points of the new law. The dramatic reversal for the Kilgore school – which already outperformed many other schools with similar demographics – comes from the new law's insistence that no child will in fact be left behind, either through low test scores or a failure to improve.

Page: 1 | 2 | 3