In December 2003, parents in Beverly, Massachusetts, got a rude shock. A small, affluent city about half an hour north of Boston, Beverly was widely regarded as having one of the strongest urban school districts in the region. But a state Department of Education report that month told a different story. In the jargon of No Child Left Behind, the newly passed federal education law, Beverly students were failing to make “adequate yearly progress” on standardized tests. In simpler language, Beverly schools were failing.

The problem wasn’t Beverly’s test scores overall, which remained comfortably ahead of statewide averages. Rather, it was that not all groups of students were experiencing the same success. Just 17 percent of low-income 10th-graders, for example, were considered “advanced” or “proficient” in English, compared with 65 percent of students overall. Black, Hispanic and special-needs students also fell short of federally mandated improvement goals in one or more subjects.

Read the article “One Success of “No Child Left Behind”” on fivethirtyeight.com.