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).
Agostini v. Felton
In 1965, Congress enacted Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act with the goal of providing adequate education to all children in the United States, regardless of individual economic conditions. This service, abbreviated as Title I, distributed federal funds to state governments, which, in turn, disbursed the funds to local education agencies. This funding was to be put towards providing remedial education services for low-income students who were at significant risk of failing to meet state academic performance standards. By law, these education services were to be provided to eligible students, whether enrolled in public school or not. Further, the services offered to children attending private schools were to be "equitable in comparison" to the services offered to children attending public school. All educational services were to be of a secular, neutral, and non-ideological nature.