A survey of seventeen-year-olds in early 2008 who were asked history and literature questions revealed the following results:

• Fewer than half knew when the Civil War was fought.

• One in four said Columbus sailed to the New World after l750, not in 1492.

• One in four were unable to correctly identify Adolf Hitler as Ger• Half knew that in the Bible Job is known for his patience in suffering. Half said he was known as a builder, warrior or as a prophet.

• Four in ten identified Ralph Ellison as the author of "Invisible Man."

• Eight in ten did know "To Kill a Mockingbird," about two white children whose father defended a black man in court.

The basic survey of 33 multiple-choice questions was conducted by Common Core, a research and advocacy group supportive of "comprehensive liberal arts and science education." They concluded that a significant proportion of teenagers live in "stunning ignorance." The group argued that the Bush No Child Left Behind program, with its emphasis on annual tests in reading and mathematics, has been at the expense of time spent on social studies, literature and art. They cite information from the Center on Education Policy that 62 percent of school systems have added an average of three hours of math a week, dropping time spent on other subjects. The Common Core report warned, "the nation's education system has become obsessed with testing and basic skills because of the requirements of federal law, and that is not healthy."

What are the overall results of seven years of the No Child Left Behind program in the public schools? What changes are being proposed by Education Secretary Arne Duncan? And how is the Stimulus Plan impacting the schools?

The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law started out in 2002 with high hopes. It called for all the nation's schools to bring 100 percent of their students to proficiency in reading and math by 2014. Each state was required to outline the statistical path to meet the goal, with about half setting low rates for the first few years to be followed by steeper rates. The states had the freedom to adopt their own curricula and testing standards, and the difficulty of the tests vary widely. By October, 2008, of the 40 states reporting, 4 in 10 schools fell short of the law's testing targets. In states with less rigorous exams, like Wisconsin and Mississippi, most schools made their targets. Results in states with tougher tests, like Massachusetts and New Mexico, were 60 to 70 percent missing the goals. In South Carolina, with the most rigorous of all tests, 83 percent of the schools failed to meet the targets. Jim Rex, the superintendent of South Carolina schools, expressed his frustration with the NCLB testing program, "The law is diagnosing schools that just have the sniffles with having pneumonia."

Criticism of NCLB began to build the year after it passed when the Bush administration, that had heralded it as their signature, cut the billions of federal funding in half. This left the states to search for the dollars to meet the federal law requirements. In addition, classroom teachers across the country found that the need to raise the scores meant that they were forced to "teach to the tests" at the detriment of a broader based curriculum aimed at their particular students. The crescendo of criticism of NCLB grew from the teachers' unions as well as from superintendents and principals in the public school systems.

With the election of Barack Obama, a new Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, the former superintendent of the Chicago schools, took over the challenges of improving public education. In addition to the K-8 years, there is the steady dropout rate in the high schools of one in four students, with only about half (53 percent) graduating in the nation's 50 largest cities on time. Research at Johns Hopkins reported that 2,000 of the nation's high schools accounted for half of the country's dropouts.

The stimulus plan more than doubled the education funding of the previous administration, with close to 120 billion allotted. Within the total is $13 billion "to ensure that all children have a fair, equal and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education . . ." There are "assurances" that governors must sign to receive billions in emergency aid including a pledge to improve the quality of standardized tests. They are required to raise academic standards to a point where high school graduates can succeed in college without remedial courses. They must also promise to build sophisticated data systems, and to enforce a requirement that their state's most effective teachers will be assigned equitably to all students, rich and poor. A separate provision gives Secretary Duncan control over $5 billion to reward states making good on their pledges.

Whether due to the rigorous requirements, or the fact that a Democratic administration was issuing them, Republican governors in Texas, South Carolina and Louisiana, said they were not going to accept the billions for their schools. Public outrage and pressure from their state legislatures forced them to retreat from that position.

Critics of NCLB are not happy that the use of standardized tests will continue to be important. Diane Ravitch, an educational historian said, "Obama's fundamental strategy is the same as George Bush's: standardized tests, numbers crunching; it's the NCLB with lots of money attached." In contrast, Cynthia Brown at the Center for American Progress, said, "They're putting money and ideas behind what they think are the changes needed in public education. That signals their seriousness about major reform." Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, expressed a concern that data systems could be misused in evaluating teacher effectiveness , but she gave Obama and Duncan a positive endorsement for their plans at reforming NCLB and education nationwide.

The federal role in education will remain important as structured by NCLB, but the public schools of the nation rely primarily on local control and funding. The district school board, through the superintendent of schools, hires the teachers and determines the curricula for every grade level. This is the heart of what happens every day in individual classrooms with all of our students.

Joyce S. Anderson is the author of "Courage in High Heels," "Flaw in the Tapestry," "If Winter Comes" and "The Mermaids Singing." She can be reached at JSAWrite@aol.com.