[freyir]

NCLB set minimum performance requirements for basic skills. It tied school's funding directly to the performance of its lowest achieving students. In my personal experience, teachers regularly stopped their regular curriculum and focused exclusively on test prep in the weeks leading up to the statewide exams. Even in honors classes, where you'd expect every student to demonstrate basic reading and math proficiency, we stopped our normal studies and did test prep.

Did this have an negative impact on gifted program funding? Some educators definitely believe it did.

"In particular, NCLB does not require any programs for gifted, talented, and other high-performing students. Federal funding of gifted education decreased by a third over the law's first five years ... In other states, such as Michigan, state funding for gifted and talented programs was cut by up to 90% in the year after the Act became law."

[soundwave106]

I'd be surprised that teachers in advanced programs would actually stop to focus on state exams or NCLB type tests? Back when I went through IB (over 20 years ago, granted), the state test was almost an afterthought. Most of the people in those programs if I recall breezed through those tests in no time, and had the remainder half a day or so to leisurely do what they want. (Obviously instead a lot more time was spent preparing for the IB and AP exams).

Half-baked measures like NCLB (eg, make schools "accountable" and they will somehow improve magically) does nothing to resolve the "environment gap", which in my opinion is probably one of the most critical factors in academic performance these days.