The cable TV channel HBO will distribute a “report card” on the federal No Child Left Behind law later this month, in the form of a documentary about an inner-city high school.

The film, “Hard Times at Douglass High,” chronicles a year at a Baltimore City high school that has spent several years on Maryland’s failing list, Frederick Douglass.

HBO is calling the film a report card, but “Hard Times” doles out no As and Bs. It is more like the kind of judgment critics of the law have called for from No Child Left Behind: nuanced portrait characterized by a mix of measures, rather than hard “yes” or “no” judgments.

By the end of the year, Frederick Douglass had raised the portion of students passing Algebra to 12% from 1%, and the portion passing English to 25% from 12%. It has graduated its largest class in 10 years, according to the principal: 200 seniors, of an entering class of about 500.

In a particularly astonishing scene, the principal tells teachers that, in a departure from the past, “You will not be getting a proficient any more if the students are not making academic success.”

Yet there are also moments like the one, at the same staff meeting, in which a teacher challenges the new policy. How are his students supposed to succeed if he only has enough textbooks for 18 out of 25 of them? he asks.

And the one just before graduation, when two teachers marvel at how it is that 200 seniors are set to graduate, yet the number of students who passed all their courses is 150.

Several troubling statistics also arise. A college counselor says that only one student in the whole school scored more than 1,000 on the SAT college entrance exam.

The portion of teachers that is certified turns out to be 66%.

A well-liked English teacher becomes frustrated and quits midway through the year, leaving students to face a series of substitutes.

Of the 200 graduates, only 50 are said to go on to college.

There is also Back to School Night, which begins with the principal standing on the auditorium’s stage to greet a sea of empty red seats, and then trudges from classroom to classroom, asking teachers to report on attendance.

Four parents, the World History teacher reports. One parent, the science teacher says. “Hoping for more!” he adds, noting that there are still 30 minutes left for someone to show up.

An English teacher says the low figures are typical. “I think my greatest night was a night I had five parents show up,” he says.

Then he adds, “All five parents were of children who are doing so well that, honestly, I didn’t really need to see them.”