National Research Council: NCLB Testing Focus "Handcuffs" Teachers

The Washington Times (5/27, Wolfgang) reports that according to a new report from the National Research Council, No Child Left Behind's "incentive programs" have "handcuffed teacher creativity and done little to boost student achievement" and should be heavily revised in the law's next iteration. The piece notes that the programs use a carrot-and-stick approach to standardized test scores to motivate schools, but "have improved student performance in key subject areas by less than 1 percentage point when using benchmarks set by the National Assessment of Education Progress, an arm of the Education Department. Assessments designed to both measure student achievement and determine school funding levels simply don't work, the report's authors argued."