PARCC
Before No Child Left Behind, The Elementary and Secondary Education Act was passed in 1965 as a part of the "War on Poverty". In hopes of diminishing the achievement gap, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act was passed to create equal opportunity and access to education through high standards and accountability. These standards and accountability techniques came in the form of standardized testing. For the first time, federal money was being sent into local schools and made the production of test-based evidence mandatory for all educators. Standards were being assessed on these state-created exams, and local schools were then accountable to perform on these exams. In 2002, Congress re-examined ESEA and reauthorized it as No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).
Science education in England
The Education Act 1902 led to the higher grade schools (alluded to earlier) and fee-paying schools being absorbed into the legally defined “higher education” (meaning any education that was not elementary (as primary education was known at the time)). Despite science education in higher grade schools and the recommendations of the Taunton Report, as well as the British Association for the Advancement of Science's campaign for a science curriculum, science was still seen as a minor subject by the most prestigious public schools. The problem was that most of these public schools had close relationships with Oxford and Cambridge universities which offered the majority of their scholarships in classics, and so science was regarded in low importance by the prestigious schools. Consequently, science education varied significantly across English schools. Numerous education-related acts were passed throughout the twentieth century, but the most important in the history of science education in England was the Education Reform Act 1988 (see next subsection). Another act of importance to the development of science education below university-level in England was the Education Act 1944. The 1944 act's contribution was indirect though—it raised the compulsory school age to 15, but made provisions for it to be raised to 16 at a future date—which happened in 1972 (which is still the case today). By raising the school leaving age to 16, this formed the basis for creating a nationally organised science curriculum and education in England. However, the 1944 Education Act did not stipulate that science be taught. For university-level science education, two significant developments were the expansion of distance learning science courses and the introduction of the World Wide Web (via the Internet) into the delivery of science teaching, although this has also been adopted below university-level.