From its inception, the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) has had the veiled intention to empower students. Through increased federal funding and an adherence to standards-based education reform, American public school students' individual outcomes were to be improved. Notably, NCLB focused attention on traditionally underserved students. Students of color, students with disabilities, and students living in poverty were to be better served via universal academic expectations of success. This aim included the distribution of funds being awarded or withheld based on a school's overall average performance on their state's annual standardized tests as well as the average performance of the school's major racial, linguistic, and ability subgroups of students. Schools that underserved all students or perpetuated the "achievement gap" by enabling White, middle-class and wealthy students to pass standardized tests while students of color, students in poverty, students with disabilities, students who speak English as a second or other language fail those same tests would lose eligibility for substantial federal funds and could be restructured or closed due to chronic underperformance. On paper, NCLB was to usher in a new era of accountability, support, high expectations, and competitiveness that would empower millions of school-age children. From my position as an 8th grade Language Arts teacher in an urban middle school that was restructured due to failure to meet NCLB demands, I was able to experience from a practitioner's perspective how NCLB policies affected the empowerment of students and teachers. Teachers and students felt the pressure to follow universalized curricula that was strictly paced and many rejected these demands. It was on the basis of these experiences that I decided to examine the empowerment of my students as we engaged in critical literacy practices within a school that demanded strict adherence to non-critical curricula and instruction.
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