And the best part of NCLB, getting qualified instructors into the classroom, is where the Feds are wavering the most.

My children attended inner-city public schools in two of the worst school districts in the nation: Dallas and Houston ISDs.

In our experience they attended very good schools. People are using statistics to tell gigantic lies.

In other words, mean quality is low and unreliability is high.

These are the signs of a seriously broken system.

NCLB does the same thing to public education as the Zip code did to the postal service: take “skill” out of the equation. Before the zip code post masters needed skill to determine how letters to various states and cities should be sorted. After the zip code they merely had to follow programatic instruction

If the government had been willing to pay post masters a higher salary and maintain and HR program to ensure they had initiative and what-not [1] Zip would not have been necessary. But the government was unwilling to sustain those things, so the Zip became vital.

In the same way, if the local governments in the United States were willing to front the money and the HR supervision necessary to reform the public school system, NCLB and what comes next would not be necessary. But the local governments are not. So the initiatives are.

Growing Adaptive Teachers [1] hs failed. American public schools need a six sigma solution.

[1] http://www.d-n-i.net/boyd/2007_conference/vandergriff_2007_boyd_conference.ppt

The challenge NCLB can't overcome is what a gigantically stupid idea it was in the first place.

“So you're saying great teachers are sitting on their butts because they're not getting a big enough performance bonus?”

No, the problem is much deeper than low pay or laziness.

The current system does not provide enough monetary or social rewards to attract enough of the teachers who are needed to make it work, and does not provide an HR system to keep and reward, monetarily or socially, those very high quality teachers who are in it.

“The challenge NCLB can't overcome is what a gigantically stupid idea it was in the first place.”

The NCLB and its broader agenda does not over come — it does not “take over.” It takes down.

What score is a kid with an IQ of 100 supposed to get?

If you think the kids in a low performing school are going to blossom into doctors and lawyers and such if sent to Bluenose Academy, I got a bridge I need to sell.

The assumptions of your last post simply don't speak to reality or the issues–kids with 100 IQs would generally need a whole different curriculum and school experience from “average” and “above-average” kids. A central problem with public schools is that to ensure that “no child is left behind” curriculum and standards have been dumbed down to make sure those 100 IQ kids, who're lumped in with the rest, don't get left behind either. Thus, the abysmal test scores and worse practical knowledge instruction across the board. These days, practical discernment and sound judgment are deemed “discrimination” by federal bureaucrats. That frame of mind prevailed during the Johnson administration, beginning the surprisingly steep slide of what lights there were in public education into darkness. You are right in thinking that kids with 100 IQs are probably limited in what they can achieve academically, regardless of the environment, where you are wrong is in assuming that the vast majority of kids with higher IQs should have their educations limited to what the 100 IQs can handle.