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I will start this article out by saying that I am not a teacher, although I have been a student on the K-12 and college levels. I am the brother of a teacher and the son of a board of education member. Many of the people I socialize with are involved in some aspect of education. Most importantly, I am a teacher's worst nightmare. If I was placed in your class, it generally meant you pissed the principal off somehow. This has given me a unique perspective on things and, through conversations with the various people that I know who are involved in the educational process, I have noticed a pattern. This pattern has become more prominent since the inception of the No Child Left Behind policy but has been lurking in the hallowed halls of educational facilities all over the country since the times of Thomas Hooker. The problem is children that are too intelligent for their classes.

Nothing in my experience is more disruptive than a child with too high an IQ and nothing challenging to apply it to. A lot of people see disruptive students as being stupid, slackers or just plain disturbed. In most situations; this is simply not the case. Of course; the intense bullying and gun violence in schools can be attributed to these conditions, as could the child caught buying test sheets, but the child selling the test sheets is another matter all together.

The student who sells test sheets, sits in the back of the class spit-balling his neighbors, and heckles the teacher is probably one of the brightest children in the class; whether you like him or not. The problem is that he is bored and so he makes his own entertainment. This is the child whose parents constantly see phrases like "wasting his potential" or "incredibly bright but lacks focus" on the report cards. These students generally test well but have poor grades due to attendance issues or lack of homework. The amount of students who fit into this category were traditionally low; yet persistently there, but this group has been expanding rapidly over the past five or ten years. The problem seems to be that more children are too bright for the material in front of them due to the classes now keeping pace with the slowest students.

Many have criticized No Child Left Behind since its implementation for many reasons, some of which are a tad bit too political for my taste. My problem with it is that in leaving no child behind we might be causing some to stall in moving forward. Any teacher can tell you that a good number of

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