The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was signed into law on April 11, 1965, by President Lyndon B. Johnson.
It became the first large-scale federal funding system for K–12 education, providing federal funds to school districts rather than directly to schools, with allocations based largely on the number of low-income students.
NCLB and ESSA are not separate laws; they are major reauthorizations of the original 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).
In 2002, the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)—signed by President George W. Bush—reauthorized ESEA and introduced extensive federal accountability and testing requirements.
In 2015, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)—signed by President Barack Obama—replaced NCLB and returned greater authority over education policy to the states.
Meanwhile, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) measures national student performance.
ESEA (whether in its NCLB or ESSA iterations) funds education. NAEP measures it. Neither was designed to produce hard-number improvement in national K–12 student performance.