College students face a lot of pressure too. Some of it may be unfair, but if they engaged in a cheating scandal like this, they would probably be kicked out of the university and nobody would bat an eye. I've seen it before. Why are teachers any different?
By the way, the tests given around here are so ridiculously easy that most students in decent school districts see them as a joke. There's no reason to teach to the test because doing so would be horribly boring. Teaching just the normal curriculum would mean teaching so high above the test that the only danger of failing is getting bored and falling asleep during the test. For decent districts, the testing really doesn't make much of a difference.
In other words, if a district has trouble getting kids to pass, there's something wrong with that district that goes far deeper than NCLB.
But I actually agree with doing away with NCLB. I'd go even further. I say do away with the Department of Education. That way, the states can do what they want with education without the federal government sucking up money from the states and dangling it over their heads with all sorts of strings attached. Then, we can compare states' different approaches and see what works and what doesn't.
