The eight-year-old No Child Left Behind Act established for the first time a federal benchmark for student achievement. When the Obama Administration took office, the new president promised to stay true to the goal of NCLB while upgrading what critics have termed simplistic, "fill in a bubble" testing to create a more comprehensive assessment of student learning. "I am calling on our nation's governors and state education chiefs to develop standards and assessments that don't simply measure whether students can fill in a bubble on a test," President Obama said in March 2009, "but whether they possess 21st century skills like problem-solving and critical thinking, entrepreneurship and creativity." In April 2010, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan set this process into motion by announcing that $350 million in funding under the Race to the Top program, established last year, 2009, as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, would be used to fund the efforts of multi-state consortia to create a new generation of assessments. "States are leading the way in creating new standards designed to ensure that students graduate from high school ready for success in colleges careers," Duncan said at the time. "To fully realize this vision, states need new assessments that measure a broader range of students' knowledge and skills," he added.