Reflection on No Child Left Behind (NCLB)

The articles on No Child Left Behind left me in a state of wonder, like I wonder who, what, and where this data mentioned in the articles came from and how valid is it. But just for the sake of clarity I will state that I like the intentions of NCLB, its trying to balance the educational playing field so to speak, between ethnic, social, and financial, and disabled segments of the population. Its implementation, however, as an educator I am not all that thrilled with at this present time. I see the negative effects of the lack of funding of the programs necessary to satisfy the guidelines spelled out in NCLB causes on poorer districts like the one I teach in. I experience first hand this effects this causes as programs are cut throughout districts as funding is taken away from programs necessary for student growth and reallocated for programs tested under NCLB mandated standardized tested subjects.
This leads to my next point, NCLB mandated standardized or high stakes testing. Once again I've experienced first hand the guiding of teachers to "teach to the test" so to speak. Teachers are prompted to place emphasis on students of the importance of passing state assessment as early as October of the school year. Students are drilled and grilled on subjects such as math, science, and literacy from a testing perspective while other enriching and necessary subjects like art, music, and physical education, have their time periods lessened to give more time to test prep sessions.
Testing from state to state as well as the discrepencies and accountablity of materials on the test are also other problems I have with the current version of NCLB. Test are not the same from state to state, be it difficulty level or emphasis of content. Accountability of different groups such as special education accommodation and reporting data is still an issue being worked on. And a final issue to me is the development of state test without ample consideration of all ethnic backgrouds and group in question and test design. I hope the revisions proposed for NCLB addresses and "fixes" a lot of these problems so that we can really stop leaving children behind.