Who benefited from the No Child Left Behind?
 

What do you guys think? Did anyone benefit?

Around the time of the Bush/Kerry election I was a sophomore in college. Once, I was riding the shuttlebus to class. The convo on the bus went something like this:

*bunch of girls bad-mouthing Bush*
Girl in red: I voted for Bush.
*bus goes quiet*
Girl in red: My mom is a public school teacher in Houston and she's so grateful. NCLB saved our schools...*praises Bush, says the idea was brilliant, cites a couple of cases she knows about*
*bus is still quiet*
Girl in front: So, has anyone noticed how much it's been raining? The weather's been crazy lately.
*Everyone chimes in and starts talking about the weather.*

I kid you not, that's pretty much how it went. Even though I've volunteered in different school systems (in CA and VA) that's the one and only time I've ever heard anything positive about it. All the teachers I've talked to hate it and my mom (a retired teacher) says many schools have closed over it and and people are terrified that they'll be next if they don't come up to scratch. I've never seen what the progress looks like in Houston so I can't attest...but it was hilarious, so I remember that one well.

I appreciate that NCLB defined what a highly qualified teacher is and in some cases phased out teachers who never intended to complete their certification.

I will take "No" for $500, Chuck.

Teachers hate NCLB because it is about helping the students themselves rather than the actual schools. I'm glad someone stopped treating schools and teachers as if they were sacred cows. Either they're working and getting results or they're not and they can be replaced. Simple as that. I'm glad someone had the courage to do this.

In my town, NCLB was part of the impetus which drove the city to pass a massive penny sales tax, raising 700 million to improve our schools (70-percent of the money was spent on inner-city schools). A further 180 million bond issue later passed. It was a good thing, but test scores in many cases didn't go anywhere because while they did replace the crumbling infrastructure, they didn't replace the incompetent faculty and administration... but by NCLB's terms, those peoples' days are numbered.

My father had a teacher at one of these inner-city schools in his office several years ago. Her son had been charged with murder and they were looking to hire him to defend him. She was adamant that money wouldn't be a problem. She said her other son could get as much as was needed. Dad asked what his occupation was and she proudly replied "he's a burglar" as if that was on par with being an MD or lawyer or something. He didn't take the case. I'm guessing that the sort of teacher they employ in these schools (like that one) probably has a bit to do with the sort of kids their churning out.

The main difference I've seen is that the first 6 weeks of school are spent reviewing the material that's on the standardized test rather than the actual curriculum for that class. My son's Algebra teacher said straight out at Open House "We won't be using the book until after the MEAPs because we'll be going over what is on the MEAP until they take it" (MEAP is the standardized test Michigan uses). Ok, so my son, who is in honors math won't being learning Algebra until the 6 week mark of school because they are teaching to that test? Ack. That's the whole first half of the first trimester. Don't you think the kids in honors math are going to pass the exam without 6 weeks of review? Ok, so since they are a year ahead of their classmates, it's been a while since they had that original material, but from my recollection, math concepts are pretty cumulative. I would think a kid who can solve a quadratic equation can do long division and understands fractions.

Our schools have drastically changed our curriculum due to increased state graduation requirements. I'm on the fence about whether these requirements are ideal for all students. They now require 4 years of math for all students (even those who earn 1 or 2 high school credits in the middle school by being in honors math and who have no intention of going into anything math related in college), and all students must take Algebra, Geometry and Algebra II/Trig. The fourth course can be a more applied type of math, like business math. They all have to take 3 years of science including either chemistry or physics. They did add a Chemistry in the Community course for kids who just aren't really science oriented.. again, a more applied science class. They all have to take an online course, which I think is probably a good thing with the current trends in academia and the prevalence of computers in ALL jobs. They also went to trimesters which, in theory, would give them more options of classes to take. But then they made a rule that band students and AP classes would all be 1.5 credits a year, so they have to have them all 3 trimesters, which has screwed my daughter out of taking any electives at all her entire high school career. AP classes shouldn't be more credits than other classes. It's ridiculous. We are talking to her band teacher about him waiving one trimester of band each year for her so that she can get these AP classes in and take some of the things she loves (creative writing, journalism, graphic design) too. Since she aspires to be a writer/journalist, it would be nice for her to be able to have some focus on this before she hits college. If she doesn't do this, she would graduate with 6 high school band credits, 5.5 high school math credits, 5 high school social studies credits, 4.5 high school science credits and 4.5 high school english credits. Although she does great in math, she hates it. Calc would be torture to her so she's going for AP Stats instead of AP Calc her senior year. Kids who aren't in band are taking both though. Being in marching band and orchestra band for 4 full years precludes her from being able to be the valedictorian. The girl who will be valedictorian dropped out of band to be able to do it. The issue though, is that many kids just don't have what it takes to complete some of these courses successfully. Not all kids are college material. Some kids aren't capable of it. I can see these kids giving up on school and I think we could see the drop out rate increase as a result.

I will note, for the record, I am not concerned with whether my daughter is valedictorian or not. SHE is the one who freaked out when she found out her academic rival dropped band to be able to take all of the AP courses offered when she, herself, will only be taking 5 of them instead of 6. She was certain she wouldn't be able to get into the school of her choice unless she was the valedictorian. I encouraged her to stay in band because having 5 years of Marching Band (she was invited to start in high school marching band while in 8th grade) shows a dedication and commitment that colleges like to see. Maintaining a 4.0 (non weighted GPA) and doing that, plus earning her Girl Scout Award, and doing all the other extracurriculars she does will only enhance her college application, even if she's "only" salutatorian.

Back to the standardized test thing though.. she was worried one year because she had a lot of absences (all medically excused, really sick that year) and I reassured her "They're not going to kick you out of school, they need your MEAP scores"

[slight hijak]

AGDee, your daughter's predicament sounds similar to mine. i opted out of one AP course to fully pursue an elective throughout hs. i took myself out of the running for top marks. it hurt to see my classmates get more scholarship offers, but at the end of the day i ENJOYED high school - and loved my ultimate college choice. i regret none of it.

[slight /hijak]

Not exactly sure what "inner city schools" had to do with this since NCLB messed up school systems top to bottom REGARDLESS of where they were but...uhhh...ok.

You really didn't need to emphasize that.

My dad (a retired elementary school principle) wasn't a huge fan of the policies. I think he was worried about increasing the stress-levels of his kids because of the added standardized testing (and believe me, in NY state, they KNOW standardized testing as there was already quite a bit before).

His school always did very well on the tests, but he felt like the teachers were suffering because their lesson plans had less flexibility and in turn the students were suffering because they weren't getting as well-rounded an education.

And he was REALLY peeved when they cut funding for a grant about halfway through when he had worked nights and weekends for a year trying to get it. I'm not 100% sure if the school ever got even half of what they were supposed to be able to get with that money - he retired right after the funding was cut (not because of that grant - that was a rough year in a lot of ways and he needed to retire).

I remember when I was in school - when standardized tests came up, we just walked in that day and were told "no regular classes, you're taking a special test." Which, of course, is the POINT - they're to show how the students are doing. Now, over fear of losing funding, teachers are teaching to the tests. Totally counterproductive.

And for some, non city areas, the school the children are at is the ONLY option, unless you want them on a bus for 3 hours a day. This is why I hate school choice of any stripe - it caters to urban areas and doesn't think about the poor kids out in the country. You can't "weed out" their schools and they usually are doing as much as they can do.

Bottom line.

If NCLB only accomplished trying to get students to 'learn' how to take a test and not 'teach' them anything, then really what did it accomplish? How much smarter are kids who had to deal with this mess now than they were before NCLB? Did it help any of them to get into college? It was all about trying to see who could get money and make money and a system set up to help kids fail.

Any teachers who are "teaching to the test" (which is really quite a misnomer, to my mind, but that's another topic altogether) are part of the problem, and any administration that allows this or caters to this is even worse. It's bad, lazy teaching - pure and simple. That's not the fault of the program, is it?

Can we all agree that there should be accountability in education just like in every other profession? Can we all agree that students' abilities should be measured as part of that?

^^^ agreed.

The NCLB act also helps SINI (schools in need of improvement) with free after school tutoring from test prep companies like Princeton Review and Kaplan as long as the student receives free or reduced lunch. I agree that this too can be a complete failure if the educator is only teaching the students to pass state exams!

Many SINI are nowhere near a Kaplan, Sylvan, or Princton Review, and tutoring is not effective in a distance learning environment.

Implying that only poor kids who don't pass the test need tutoring? That's absurd.

The real problem with this philosophy of blaming the teacher and the school system when kids don't learn is that there are a million factors that determine where a child is academically. My kids would pass any standardized test in the world no matter what the skill level of the teachers who taught their courses was. They are intelligent kids who get good nutrition, don't live in fear of crime 24/7, who have parents who value education, who have an innate desire to know things and takes initiative to learn things on their own, whose parents have heat in the house and electricity and a computer for every person in the house, who don't have learning disabilities or mental or physical illnesses that prevent them from learning, who get their hearing and eyes checked regularly, etc. They've had good teachers and not so good teachers and when the teachers were not so good, they learned it on their own or asked for more help from their educated parents. A far cry from a kid who is living in poverty with no heat or electricity, who might eat the one free meal a day from the school, who has a learning disability and needs glasses but can't afford them, who is in a high crime area and is far more worried about staying safe walking home from the bus stop than getting their home work done, who don't sleep well because they live in fear of an alcoholic, abusive parent, etc.

Education is about so much more than how well a teacher can teach a subject.

Except that is the only way they can teach, at least that is the problem here in Texas. There have been many guidelines placed on what students MUST learn by the end of the school year, given by grade level and by subject area that there isn't any leeway to teach "outside" the test. The TEKS (which are those guidelines) are the guidelines for the test, and teachers MUST follow them (no ifs ands or buts, they are accountable for what TEKS they do every day of every week of every month). If the TEKS are the guidelines for the TAKS tests (which is what grades 3-12 take here) then the teachers ARE "teaching to the test."

Do you think my mom, a teacher in the school district for almost 40 years, likes the NCLB? No. She agrees that the accountability is great, yeah teachers should be accountable for their students. But what about those teachers who teach all they can, do all they can to help the students, yet the students fail. The illegals who are fresh out of the border and start school MUST take the TAKS test. Most of these people can't speak a lick of English, yet they have to take the TAKS, in English, and pass or else it's the teachers fault. That doesn't sound fair. Of course immigration is a separate issue that we don't need to venture into, but that is the reality that many teachers here face. At the end of last school year, the school district took my mom's classroom away from here and gave her all the "LEP" kids (the 'esl' kids) and had her teach them---"teaching to the test." Why? Because all of her classes were either 90%-100% passing rate, and they wanted her to teach the LEP kids to pass.

If a school goes on AYP, which means they didn't have an acceptable passing rate in some subject (like for a lot of schools in this area, it's math) then they don't get funding. That is what NCLB does, it gives funding to all the school that meet their standards, and to the "low performing schools" they don't give squat, except a 5 year growth plan. Schools can also go on AYP for having a low graduation rate. Now, at 16 years old, kids can choose to drop out of school if they want. Once they drop out, the schools can't have to MAKE them go back (and really, how can you make a 16 year old, these are usually gang members or teens who have multiple babies, go back to school). Yet the school won't meet the graduation standard, and thus won't get any funding and be put on the growth plan.

ETA:
YEEEEESSSSS!!!!!

I normally don't engage madmax, but often times inner city schools have higher graduation rates than rural areas. Pregnancy rates are often as high, and sometimes it's just easier to leave school and work on a farm than to stick it out for a diploma when there are mouths to feed.

Many children in rural areas face similar problems to children in inner city schools, it's just that no one seems to make that connection.

Of course someone found benefit.

Companies that write standardized tests.

!!
 

Yes! Honestly liked the idea of NCLB, but I think it was very sloppily implemented.

Are low graduation rates a school's fault? Or the parents' faults? Or society's fault? The kids I knew who dropped out of school did so because A) they were pregnant, B) they were too high to go to school or C) They were suspended from every school in the area due to their own behavior and were out of options

Do kids really not graduate because of poor teaching ability of teachers?

I think if you have to place the blame somewhere, I would think that low graduation rates are a community's fault. A community (whether it be the local city, the state, etc) should try and implement more programs to assist those who are on the verge of dropping out. I'm not saying that, they HAVE to do it, but it would be nice. You can blame it on the parents, but you'll get nowhere trying to get them on board w/ education. A lot of parents here see HS education as a waste of time, they rather their son go get a job and help provide for the family, and their daughters to help take care of the house. So the kids feel a lot of pressure to drop out (some want to stay in school, some are glad to drop out). It's one of those "i'm poor, and i'm gonna stay poor, so why waste my time getting a diploma" mentality. Then of course you have the girls who get pregnant and decide just to drop out because they don't want to deal with a kid and school. It doesn't matter that the school districts here have "School Age Parent Centers" where the mothers can get an education and have a daycare for their kid(s). Most of the time those parent centers are utilized while the girls are pregnant, and the girls will stay only if they have the type of parents that really care about the girl's education. By around 8th grade,though, a kid here knows if they are gonna finish school or not.

Kids don't drop out because of a poor teacher. But to NCLB it doesn't really matter. Graduation rate affects the AYP. My HS, for example, has met all the AYP standards for the different subjects, but not for graduation rates. So they got put on the 5 year plan. If the school doesn't bring up it's graduation rate in 5 years, then the school will get taken over by the government and restructured. It has NOTHING to do with the teachers ability, but if the school gets restructured, those HS teachers will most likely lose their job and be replaced by more "effective" teachers.

Yes.

But any of those three can do something to fix the problem. There are some very enterprising and successful programs aimed at these troubled schools. I think very highly of the KIPP schools which have been able to duplicate their successful methods all around the nation. There are also quite a few highly successful charter and enterprise schools which are taking the same kids who would have failed in public schools and sending them to college.

Of course parents can take charge of their kids' education, but that's not always a viable option in, for example, single parent homes where mom thinks "burglar" is a fine vocation.

And "society"? I don't think blaming "society" should really be a viable option either. What exactly is "society"? A culture? A bad set of circumstances? It seems to me that out of the three, the kid herself has the most control over her circumstances with respect to their "society" or the impact that has upon them.

I was a Site-Manager for 3 yrs and NYC DOE (Department of Education) requires that all providers conduct instruction at the school site after school. You hired educators with the license and hired to train at that school.

http://www.tprk12.com/index.php?opti...599&Itemid=242

Agree with you on your stance on distant learning.

Who implied that free or reduced lunch made you poor...I didn't. And the eligibility requirements are only that you receive free or reduced lunch (not your State Standardized test scores). But you hit the nail on the head with your thoughts on other factors why students fail to achieve better grades. This is what so many people educators included fail to realize.

If KIPP schools were available everywhere, that could make some sense, but they are only in 19 states.. hardly accessible to all kids. The Detroit Public Schools, while failing as a district, do have some incredible specialized schools such as a foreign language immersion school where kids are taught in two languages simultaneously. There are also some great charter schools in the area. The parents who make the effort to get their children into these schools also have to transport them every day because those schools don't have buses. The point is, the parents have to sign their kids up for these schools. The parents have to care enough about their child's education to make that effort to sign them up and get them there. Therefore, those kids have an advantage over some of the others from the start, don't they? A child is not allowed to enroll themselves into a school without parental permission. Maybe they should be?

You and I will always disagree about whether society should be held accountable or not. I think it's insane that there are neighborhoods that aren't safe to walk through. It shouldn't happen anywhere, ever. There should be enough jails, enough police enforcement, enough everything to get criminals off the street and keep our streets safe. It should be the top priority of any society to get dangerous people behind bars.

Yes, there are some rare kids who fight the odds and manage to better themselves despite everything going against them. I think, in most of those cases, somebody believed in them and lit a fire under them to believe in themselves. Some of them never connect with a person who will do that for them. Perhaps some teachers do perform in that role for some kids, but not teachers who have over 200 students a day, who have to spend most of their day managing violence rather than teaching.

I just see it as a much bigger problem than teachers who can't teach.

To get free lunch, you have to be at poverty level. To get reduced lunch, you have to be at 25% above poverty level. That's why those students get free or reduced lunch. I know because I looked into it when my ex husband got laid off. I thought that at 50% of his pay, he would be eligible, but making $25K a year with 1 dependent, he is not. Living on less than $25K with a kid is most definitely not middle class.

As far as transportation goes, my wife teaches at a charter school and many of the kids ride the city bus system to school and many do so while either being emancipated and paying their own bills, living with a grandparent or living with a state-appointed guardian. It's really a pleasure for me to have the contact with those kids that I do get to have... and in very many of their cases, the parents are either hostile to the kids' wishes to get educated or just outright ambivalent. Just this morning, my wife was telling me about one of her kids who will be applying to Howard. The kid lives with her grandmother who tells her school is a waste of time, she's too dumb, too ugly, etc. to be anything or anybody, etc.

I'm sure that situation is very common. It's a good thing this kid's in a charter school where there exist a culture which tells her that it doesn't matter what the grandmother says and that she can persevere despite all the things going against her.

I do think that ultimately, parents OR schools can save these kids... any attempt to engineer society though, I think, short of doing good things with individuals and letting them succeed is doomed to fail.

As for KIPP schools, new ones are opening all the time. It's an excellent model and the reorganization of failed public schools will open the door to many more KIPP schools down the line.

NCLB hurt the school systems. But that's no surprise. That is what happens when you have people creating policies who don't really have enough experience with running school systems.

With respect to the certification issue, that really has not actually improved the quality of the teachers that are being hired. Point blank, until the government get its act together and starts offering teachers compensation that is really and truly in proportion to what they are worth, they will have a very difficult time finding quality teachers. The low pay and stringent requirements of NCLB are a deterrent for many, many people who would be excellent teachers.

Wow...good information. I know that variety of the schools in NYC are on a universal system which allows all students to qualify for free lunch and SES services. You situation sounds close to my family's when I was younger...I remember it being tough...hope things are better.

How are they the community's fault? They can't control a parent who doesn't care about their child's schooling. And live we've all seen, many times when a parent doesn't care, the kid isn't going to care.

That's awesome that your wife's school district is near a city bus stop. I'm sure parents in our area would LOVE for their child to walk half a mile from the bus stop to the school, especially with child molesters out there, and then with the snow and rain. Great idea.

PLEASE stop thinking that everyone and everything is so privileged like your family apparently is.

While I get what you are saying, you have to look at it like this,in some cases, kids living near a bus stop would HELP them go to school. When I was in 8th grade, we walked about a mile or so to school thru 'some of the roughest streets of Baltimore' through heat, wind, cold and rain, and lived to tell the tale...wooo hooo. Not everyone nor every district is privileged enough to have school buses that stop at your door to pick you up and drop you off.

While I may not agree with everything Kevin has said in this thread, i can see the point he has made here.

Not every parent has a car, nor will every parent be able to drop their kids off. A good transit system can sometimes be an appreciative motivator to get kids to and from school.

You're completely right. While I never had to take the bus, I know there are kids who heavily relied on the school busses, and the bus stop was very near their homes.

Detroit's bus system isn't exactly safe and I'd never put my niece or nephew on it alone. Hell I'd never ride it alone or even with a friend. I think it'd be harder in suburbs for students to rely on the bus system to get to schools outside of their district. I know the two charter schools in my area aren't near a bus stop.

It was actually harder for me living in the city catching the bus (buses running late or crowded, apathetic drivers, and so on).

Now in converse to that, I live in the suburbs and the kids have EASY access to get transportation and to school. Metro stops at all the corners, 3 buses to and from the subway and then of course the subway itself, not to mention that YES, the regular yellow school bus. Never rule out transit when it comes to getting kids to and from school and how teachers rely on it.
I don't care where you live....in Grime City USA or Lily White County...putting a child on a bus system is dicey business at best unless you plan for it.

It is truly hilarious for you to think of these kids as 'privileged.'

As far as transit stops go, schools should work with community organizations which can help to add bus stops and transit options to help kids get to school. That's one of the big advantages to having city buses rather than fixed-guideway transit options -- routes can be changed and added to. The only real hangup is where the bus picks up and generally, bus stops are around at fairly regular intervals.

As far as being afraid of child molesters, etc., bad stuff happens every day. Chances are it won't happen to you no matter where you are so long as you are aware of your surroundings and don't make yourself a target, travel in groups, etc. If you're going to use a dangerous city bus, it doesn't mean you have to walk into the situation unsafely or naively.

Also, around here, if you're on a city bus, you can basically have it stop and let you out at any time. I don't know if that's an option where you're from, but merely having a bus which drives by or near the school ought to be enough.

Really though, you missed my point entirely. Ultimately, it's up to individuals to see themselves out of their dire straits. If someone is there to help them? Awesome. If not? That's really no excuse.

Out of curiosity, what is a suburb to you? I think we're thinking of two totally different things. In our version of the suburb, people drive everywhere. Even driving to Downtown Detroit isn't bad as far as parking goes. There are a few parking lots that are used for people who work downtown and don't want to drive there and take the bus. In our suburb, you even DRIVE to the bus stop lol. We don't have Metro... we have SmartBus, driven by the craziest drivers and I don't know how many times I've almost gotten hit by them. And we also don't have a subway system. Mass transit or whatever people call it isn't an option in our area. I think it'd be completely awesome if we did. I wouldn't get stuck driving my drunk friends around.


I forgot to post earlier that I have a few teacher friends. We chatted about NCLB and I was under the impression that it meant no matter how bad a kid was doing, he wouldn't fail that grade. I didn't know that there was SO much to it. Both of these friends that I spoke with are by far lazy teachers. They are constantly thinking up new and different projects and activities for the kids. They are involved in their life as far as a teacher can go. They are the type of teachers that a student goes back to and says "You were an awesome teacher". Both of them aren't happy with this system because they DO have to teach the test. They don't have much of a choice because the schools make "the test" their curriculum.

I hate standardized tests. I'm a bad test taker. I probably would have graduated high school and college with a 4.0 had I never had to take a test.

Im 20 miles away from downtown DC if that matters. And yes where I live, having a car DOES matter although here in THIS county we have decent Metro access. ANd I am lucky that I live near the end of the subway line. My MIL and my best friend live 5 miles away and have to drive to MY area to get metro access but that's not considered rural...heh.

But that is beside the main idea of what Kevin was trying to impart.

The main idea really is kids with any kind of access has a better chance to make do with the school system than those who don't

I didn't know that there were different 'versions' of suburbs.

I think NCLB has done a lot of good. It's flawed, but it's done more to focus instructional resources on typically ignored, or at least marginalized, public school learners than probably anything we did previously, maybe since integration.

Teasing out subgroup performance meant that even schools with high average scores had to consider the performance of the learning disabled, minority groups, and the economically disadvantaged, for example, and dedicate resources to their instruction that they probably weren't getting before. And sure, lower performing schools did probably reflect their communities maybe more than they reflected the efforts of their staff, but NCLB meant districts had to be somewhat more serious about staffing these schools with certified teachers and somewhat focused on instruction.

The problem with too much complaining about "teaching to the test" is that there's really no evidence, since we didn't really measure much, that there was some golden age of teaching before accountability. And while NAEP scores* haven't really gone up as much as most state test scores, I don't think anyone can point to a measure of education that has gone down since NCLB was implemented.

*NAEP is a national test that is giving in some districts to track performance over time. It gives a measure of how kids today are performing compared with kids twenty years ago. It's not flawless, but it's interesting.

The biggest thing that bugs me is that people attribute a lot of crappy instruction to the law that the law doesn't actually require. If your system delivered good instruction, it wouldn't have to teach to the test. The states made their own tests, so if the tests are crap or poorly linked to the state curriculum, your state, not NCLB is to blame.

The bolded part is a great example of what I meant as far as the bill getting blamed for district response to it.

Sure, graduation rate as measure by the number of 9th graders who enter who graduate four years later is one indicator for school performance under NCLB. BUT it's the school districts and spineless administrators who have decided that rather than try to get kids to do all their assignments and actually learn something (or take responsibility for re-taking the course) that teachers should just hand out passing grades. These geniuses apparently have so little faith in actual learning that they don't see that there would probably be a relationship between lowering requirements for the class and kids maybe not learning as much to show off in the tests.

But NCLB probably included graduation rates so that schools didn't have a perverse incentive to push kids no likely to do well on the tests out of school. And yes, I think there are some schools that would have done this. I think a lot of schools indirectly encouraged certain kids to drop out for a long time.

The community (like in terms of enforcing laws) can most definitely control a parent up until the child is around 16, so why can't it continue until the child is 18? True, there are kids that aren't gonna care if their parents don't care, but that isn't always the case. But if a child has parents who don't place any emphasis on getting a diploma, it's harder for them to continue. That is where the community should come in. I'm not saying that the community is to blame, but if you HAD to place the blame somewhere, IMO it would be the community.

ETA:
And where is your proof that the more stringent requirements for certification don't improve the quality? That's true that not every teacher is a quality teacher, but NCLB didn't lower the bar, the less-than-quality teachers have been around waaaaay longer than NCLB. The federal government sets up guidelines for what a "highly qualified" teacher is, and each state then sets their own standards for a "highly qualified" teacher. So really, it depends on the state if you have "lower" quality teachers.