Despite what the (Bush) administration was claiming, this is an indication that No Child Left Behind may not have made much of a difference because these are the same results we saw before the law was in effect.
One benefit of the law is that it gives schools the authority to do things they've wanted to do for a long time but couldn't.
Both the President and Congress moved in exactly the wrong direction last year by approving a cut in education, and this year aggravated the situation by approving another cut just as the demands of the law were becoming greater.