It's kind of interesting how every teacher I've talked to that's taught for a decade or three agrees that NCLB is awful, yet among the general populace (HN comments), that's considered more evidence that teachers are incompetents.
Possibly the best thing I can say about NCLB is that it's fueling demand for good exclusive secular schools. Which is all well and good if you live near an urban center, but too bad for you if you're growing up an hour away from the nearest magnet school.
Almost all teachers dislike NCLB.
Almost all policemen dislike right-to-record-the-police laws.
Almost all doctors want to limit malpractice.
Almost all taxi companies dislike Uber.
It's as though there's something going on with those groups besides their greater familiarity with the subject. Some kind of... incentive.
Yet you did basically say that the reason teachers hated NCLB was because it would reveal them not doing their job properly, in the same paragraph as you basically saying that police hate recordings because it would reveal them not doing their job properly, or doctors hate malpractice suits because they reveal them not doing their job properly.
Which I guess isn't exactly the same as saying that only bad teachers hate NCLB, but the distinction is minor and irrelevant.
Well, what I actually said was not that "they reveal them not doing their job properly," but rather, "they have incentives."
All of those things are a nuisance and a threat for those groups of people. Even if you're a good policeman whose conduct is objectively awesome, when you see someone recording you, you have to wonder, "Will this guy catch me on camera screwing up, even though the last hundred times I've done everything right? Will the people who view this recording understand that I'm doing everything right if I do? Why doesn't this guy trust me?" And even if you're a good policeman, you know your buddy Bob, well... he doesn't have as exemplary a record as you do, but you think that on balance he's a good guy.
And, I don't know if this is true of the police, but for the teachers at least, they have the unions, their representatives and advocates, spending a LOT of time saying, "Testing is of the devil." They hear it day in and day out, from other teachers, from the unions, from a lot of politicians.
Those things matter. They matter a lot. If they didn't matter, teachers wouldn't be human.
And the fact is, there are downsides to all of those safeguards. They aren't perfect. Some of them may need to be reformed. Some may need to be reformed a lot.
But that's all beside the point, which is that teachers have a huge incentive to hate NCLB outside of its merits or faults as a program.
> it's fueling demand for good exclusive secular schools
I went to programs for the "highly" gifted as part of LAUSD (the largest school district in the US), half of it under NCLB. I watched my high school's program's decline firsthand in the first years of NCLB, as teachers went from actually teaching and not restricting us to what we have to learn, to teaching to tests instead. It was pretty much gutted in the last several years due to lack of teachers and funding - and that was despite the ongoing donations made by parents and alumni to supplement the program (such as buying new textbooks and specialized equipment).
Keep in mind this was a program of maybe 350 students in a 4000+ student high poverty school.. at most a 10% that scored so highly on tests that we skewed the performance numbers for the entire school. National Merit Scholars and SAT 1600-ers (perfect score then) with full AP and beyond AP courseloads destined for Ivies mingled with some of the most impoverished students and low performers in the entire district for lunch.
The biggest alternative that I recall was a private school many of my friends ended up going to - Harvard Westlake, with a then $25k/year tuition now I think more like $35k/year. Admission to both my public program and that private school was very competitive, with waitlists and whatnot. I think there still are waitlists for my old program, even though it's a shadow of what it used to be. But really, it's just one among the many if not most gifted/magnet programs in LAUSD in the same situation.
Where is this incredible demand for good schools now? Where is the support to maintain existing good schools? Most importantly, where is all of this for the average American student instead of the few with resources that you can't even begin to imagine (read: ones that can afford $35k/year tuition and private tutors)? All I'm seeing now is a sea of mediocrity outside of a handful of teachers, programs, and schools that have prospered so far, and it's generally the community that's helping them more than the state or federal government. There is rarely a benefit to outperforming beyond measure when everyone is focused on the people that can't even meet minimums. :(
Possibly the best thing I can say about NCLB is that it's fueling demand for good exclusive secular schools. Which is all well and good if you live near an urban center, but too bad for you if you're growing up an hour away from the nearest magnet school.