[mbyrne]

If you say No Child Left Behind pushed teachers to teach to a test (easy) rather than teaching critical thinking, etc. (hard) and then you say No Child Left Behind failed to deliver any statistically significant impact on test scores, aren't you just saying teachers can't even teach the easy stuff?

How do you think they can teach the hard stuff if they can't even move the needle on the easy things (in this scenario of yours)?

[gerrys0]

Yes, teaching to a test should be easy, and it is easy to your median 15-year-old. The gigantic problem with NCLB - and something I've not seen mentioned in this HN story - is that NCLB is a one-size-fits-all mandate, and there is NOTHING about education in the US or anywhere that is one-size-fits-all. Hundreds of factors influence the raw material (children) that teachers have to work with every day.

Countries like Finland do not try to graduate all of their children in the same way. 43% of Finland's HS graduates graduate from vocational schools (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/Why-Are-Finlands...). The US has slowly moved further and further away from this type of "tracking" since the 70's. Things like NCLB and the over-valued notion of a college degree has only accelerated this problem. I am not optimistic.

[da-bacon]

What makes you think teaching to a test is easy? If the sole motivation of teaching is to increase a students score on a narrowly defined set of metrics, how motivated do you think students are going to be? I'm curious because in my experience the hardest learning I've done is when it's been aimed at achieving some hurdle for a narrow externally defined subject.