Some new numbers about the No Child Left Behind Act paint a bleak portrait of the country’s education system. According to a report from the Center on Education Policy, 48 percent of the nation’s public schools did not meet No Child Left Behind’s requirements for “adequate yearly progress,” a percentage-based criteria for improvement set by individual states. However, students’s performance on the national standardized test are not considered in AYP. Diane Ravitch is a former U.S. assistant secretary of education and author of “The Death and Life of the Great American School System.” Mark Wilson is the principal of Morgan County High School in Madison, Georgia.