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teaching materials that do not always allow a teacher's individual personality to mesh evenly with the lesson. In addition to this dull regimen, popular and creative classes like art and music will be pushed aside to allow more teaching of the "important" classes.

This act increased the stress levels of students in ways that the law never intended and never addressed. The annual tests put direct pressure on teachers that then trickled down to the students and also created a competitive element to the equation; student peers and even teachers become frustrated dealing with slower learning children. A specific example of how detrimental this stress has been is obvious in the case of a special education 3rd grader who had a difficult time with reading. Her teacher spent countless hours working with her and she made great self-improvement over the year. When the state test came and she failed to pass when set up to the standards of her peers, the girl was hit once again with the reality that not only did her slower learning style set her apart from her peers, but despite her improvement, she was still considered below proficient and her self-esteem crumbled. Instead of being applauded for her self-improvement, the tests placed an unfair amount of anxiety that did nothing but hurt her education.

An important variable in education has always been parent involvement and the measures in the NCLB act did nothing to encourage it. Legislation in the act requires schools to distribute the name, home phone number, and address of every student in that district to military recruiters. A parent can withhold this information but it will also withhold the same information from being sent to colleges and job recruiters, placing parents in a perfect catch-22. Another example of the inability to get parents involved can be seen in the part of the act that states schools needing improvement must allow low-income students under Title 1 to have the ability to transfer schools. This places all of the pressure on the school and does not give a parent good reason to intervene in something that he or she does not feel is their problem. In a specific example of a school that was deemed needing improvement, 8 families out of 214 showed up to an educational meeting about school transferring. Fliers were sent out, personal phone calls were made, even free babysitting was provided, and still the turnout was dismal. How much more could the teachers have done to encourage participation?

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