This is the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

Though several years old, No Child Left Behind has already gained a great deal of notoriety in the educational community, and for good reason--if a public school fails to live up to the standards set forth, it could lose its federal funding and be forced to allow students to enroll in other schools. In Cupertino and Sunnyvale, most schools' test scores are already high enough to be considered excellent, or if not, they're well on their way.

But while local educators aren't too worried about the effects of No Child Left Behind on their specific schools, they are still concerned about the kind of school culture that such a dependence on test scores is producing, especially when the goal is to push every child above average. And with declining funding for schools and little additional money coming from No Child Left Behind, schools won't have the class sizes and tools it takes to keep scores up.

"No one would disagree with the intent of No Child Left Behind, but the criteria by which districts are judged is very inappropriate," said Dr. Colleen Wilcox, the superintendent of schools in Santa Clara County. "Humanity comes on a bell-shaped curve. There are students who are developmentally limited, or who are English language learners. You can't apply the same standards to them all."

No Child Left Behind employs a measure called AYP, which stands for Annual Yearly Progress. In California, the AYP of each school is calculated by using a number of elements. These elements include the growth in percentage of students meeting or exceeding state standards in language arts and math and the Academic Performance Index (API) test scores. It also requires that at least 95 percent of the school's students take the state's standardized test. For high schools, growth in the percentage of entering freshmen who eventually graduate is included as well.

A school's AYP is expected to improve each year. If schools do not improve their AYP for two years in a row, they have to send letters to parents, saying that they can place their children in other district schools. And No Child Left Behind states that the child's home school has to pay for transportation.

"Do we need to do something about low-performing schools? Yes," Wilcox said. "But that district might have only one school, or none of the others reached their goal either. And if 30 students shift to another school, there may not be space or teachers for them. Dispatching kids around to other schools creates chaos."

But despite the local districts' successes, some teachers worry about No Child Left Behind because of its dependence on objective numbers. With all of this pressure to keep test scores up, teachers must focus curriculum on the tests.

Debra McGibbon teaches kindergarten at Meyerholz Elementary School in Cupertino and is aghast at how much time she spends testing students. "It may just be 15 or 20 minutes a day, but when you only have kindergartners for three hours a day, it adds up," she said. McGibbon no longer has the time to do a cooking activity with her youngsters every Friday as she used to, and they only paint "once in a while," she said.

She added that at the beginning of the year, she tests four- and five-year-olds on concepts they aren't required to know until they reach first grade (API testing doesn't begin until the second grade, so the testing is simply to determine whether students are meeting state standards). And because California doesn't have public preschools, and children start kindergarten at younger ages in this state, many of her students are simply learning how to deal with being in a classroom during a time when their brainpower is still limited.

"If a kid is only trained in super high-focused literacy, they won't develop the resiliency and problem-solving skills that they need," she said. "I can tell which children have parents who sent them to highly structured preschools. When they can't zip up their backpack or find their jacket, they simply panic and start to cry because they don't know what to do. They can read, but they aren't self-sufficient."

Testing has long been a plague on students at the other end of the educational spectrum, but Homestead High School history teacher Jim Blaschke said he sees nothing but trouble for schools dependent on strings of data, especially those gathered at divergent times. "We've made a god out of a set of numbers," he said. "We're testing juniors on material they've never seen before because we don't teach economics until the senior year."

Especially troublesome to Blaschke is the testing circuit, which brings up a glut of exams every spring for high school students. "They're taking the high school exit exam in March, the API in April and advanced placement tests are three weeks after that. But the API isn't attached to anything for them, so if they don't do well, who cares?" Blaschke said. "We test kids from 8 a.m. until noon, and then expect them to go to class afterwards and be tuned in. They're tested out, so you lose that instructional time."

Blaschke is especially concerned for test scores due to declining school budgets--freshman English classes at Homestead used to have a 20 to1 student/teacher ratio, but don't any longer due to financial concerns. He says test scores correspondingly dropped. API scores at four of the five high schools in the Fremont Union High School District--generally considered an excellent district--fell last year. A common complaint about No Child Left Behind is that the federal government set forward these new standards, but didn't deliver the money to make sure schools could meet them.

For scores on the API, the California standardized tests given annually in multiple subjects in grades second through 11, the benchmark is 800 for a school and identified subgroups of students. All schools in the Cupertino Union School District and a number in Sunnyvale School District scored above 800 on the most recent set of scores, so those schools are not in danger of failing to reach their yearly targets. Schools that are above 800 on API test scores and fluctuate will still be fine if they stay above that benchmark.

But for schools that are on the bubble and short of the benchmark, they do not have a choice. Bishop Elementary School in Sunnyvale dropped from an API score of 760 in 2003 to 734 in 2004. Principal Frances Dampier said she thought the drop was a fluke, given the steady improvement the school had been making in years past. She also said that when compared to other schools of similar demographics, Bishop is doing quite well.

However, that 800 safety zone is on the horizon for Bishop, and Dampier said the school is doing what it needs to do to get there. "We have a lot of socio-economically disadvantaged kids, and a lot of English learners," she said. "We're hitting all the modalities and gearing our tutorials toward the weak areas. There's a lot of targeted instruction, and we're putting more emphasis on the information on the tests." Teachers and administrators at Bishop have looked at scores to pinpoint exact groups and areas that could be improved.

For instance, in reading, state standards are divided into three focuses--word analysis, reading comprehension and literary response and analysis. Bishop is focusing on those specific areas through a number of ways, including a survival English class before school for non-English speaking newcomers, and pairing low achieving students with high achieving students. It's a bit of work that takes effort away from other school projects, but Dampier said it's required.

"We have to pay attention because this is the test that the public sees," she said. "It's one test, but it's published in all the newspapers and the real estate agents use it. It isn't fair, but it's reality."

While teachers worry about striving for the appearance of success with high test scores, it's a concern they have to face themselves as well. Another precept of No Child Left Behind is that by June 2006, a "highly qualified teacher" will staff every classroom in the country. Some longstanding educators are scrambling to ensure that they are in good standing, but new teachers are jumping through hoops they never had to in the past.

"Highly qualified" means that a teacher must hold at least a bachelor's degree, a passing grade on the California Basic Educational Skills Test and a passing grade on either a general academics test for elementary school teachers or a specific subject test for secondary school teachers. As this is a new federal requirement, all new teachers must get documentation of the completion of these requirements that they can take from state to state. But for many districts in Santa Clara County, these requirements may cause problems in the future.

"Fifteen percent of our teachers aren't fully credentialed, and 40 percent of our teachers are 50 or older. Not only are they hiking up the credentialed rates, but a number are of retirement age," Wilcox said. "We're not getting an infusion of new teachers because a lot of our newly-minted teachers can't afford to live in the area. That puts an extra burden on the locations where no one can afford to go."

In addition to that, Wilcox said that judging a teacher simply by a credential isn't always the best move. "There are a lot of classrooms with children who have severe disabilities, and we primarily use instructional aides who can address a variety of those problems. They're not paid well, but they're extremely loving, caring people," she said.

McGibbon agreed. "Just giving someone a credential and putting them in a classroom doesn't mean they'll be a good teacher," she said.

Districts are doing different things to ensure their teachers will be prepped for the June 2006 deadline. For instance, in the Sunnyvale School District, 279 of its 296 teachers are fully complaint with No Child Left Behind standards, and the remaining five percent are in the process. Teachers already with the district were able to use experiences like professional development courses and leadership roles--such as serving as a master teacher for student teachers--to stand in for the subject test requirement.

"It's really just been a hassle," said Shelly James, head of human resources with the Sunnyvale School District. "This is not a new policy, and most folks have been in good standing with us for a long time."

McGibbon, who has taught kindergarten since 1980, said she worries about middle school teachers, who may switch back and forth between a more general sixth grade class setting and a more specific seventh grade course--and would, under No Child Left Behind, technically have to pass different tests for each.

Blaschke has taught at Homestead for 38 years and is retiring this spring, so he doesn't have to worry about passing the "highly qualified" test. But he said that he would likely have never entered the teaching profession if the process had been the same for him as it is now. "The art of teaching is being squeezed out of the profession," he said. "We're putting qualified teachers in the classroom but losing sight of the elements [of teaching]."

The general consensus among educators is that this is the problem with No Child Left Behind--a show of style over substance. If a school or a district appears to be successful, then it is. President Bush did recently propose a $1.5 billion extension of No Child Left Behind, which he calls called the High School Initiative. This extension pledges money to a number of programs, but the main thrust is to expand testing requirements through all four years of high school--something the state of California already does.

He stood behind No Child Left Behind at the State of the Union address on Feb. 2, saying, "To make our economy stronger and more dynamic, we must prepare a rising generation to fill the jobs of the 21st century. Under the No Child Left Behind Act, standards are higher, test scores are on the rise and we're closing the achievement gap for minority students."

But teachers are frustrated by policies laid out under No Child Left Behind, saying that they don't take into account the unique needs of every child, or understand that it's impossible for all scores to be above average. "We're pleading for more flexibility, but that'll depend on whether or not the president will budge on this," Wilcox said.

At least one teacher thinks that this is the point. "They aren't interested in improving public schools," Blaschke said. "They think public schools should be privatized. The schools in San Jose are being eaten alive now."

As of now, No Child Left Behind plans to have all students proficient by the year 2014, a rather lofty goal that many believe in but don't believe is possible.