early on in the bush (ii) administration, they passed a bill called "no child left behind" that would cut funding from schools that couldn't achieve desired standardized test scores.

while this may seem to align incentives, in reality a school that has struggling students needs MORE resources, not less.

the outcome, in reality, is an extreme desire to "teach to the test," where developing actual skills is secondary to learning the structure of test problems and how to answer them correctly enough to keep the school from being obliterated.

teachers are one of the most valuable, most undervalued positions in society. my mother taught elementary school for 20 years; when she retired, i was making 3 times her salary doing my computer job. this is the sad but inevitable outcome from the policies put in place by a class of people that can afford to educate their children outside of the systems forced upon the working class.