I believe that the whole child should be measured.
Since the No Child Left Behind law took effect in 2002, it has had a sweeping impact on U.S. public school classrooms. It affects what students are taught, the tests they take, the training of their teachers and the way money is spent on education. Debate rages over whether the law is an effective way to improve academic achievement. Under the law, elementary school teachers must have a bachelor's degree and pass a rigorous test in core curriculum areas. Middle and high school teachers must demonstrate competency in the subject area they teach by passing a test or by completing an academic major, graduate degree or comparable course work. These requirements already apply to all new hires. And schools are required to tell parents about the qualifications of all teachers, and they must notify parents if their child is taught for more than four weeks by a teacher who is not highly qualified. Schools that do not comply risk losing federal funding.

European Agency for Development in Special Needs Education 2010

Savolainen (2009) notes that teachers play an essential role in quality education and

quotes McKinsey and Company who say: ‘the quality of an education system cannot

exceed the quality of its teachers’. (p. 16) Studies suggest (e.g. Sanders and Horn, 1998; Bailleul et al., 2008) that the quality of the teacher contributes more to learner

achievement than any other factor, including class size, class composition, or background. The need for ‘high quality’ teachers equipped to meet the needs of all learners becomes evident to provide not only equal opportunities for all, but also education for an inclusive society. Reynolds (2009) says that it is the knowledge, beliefs and values of the teacher that are brought to bear in creating an effective learning environment for pupils, making the teacher a critical influence in education for inclusion and the development of the

inclusive school. www.european-agency.org

The law, which was passed with bipartisan support, was designed to introduce national standards to a system in which students in some demographic groups were more likely to succeed and others likely to be left behind. But it allows states to determine how success is measured.
States are required to set targets for overall achievement and for specific categories of students, such as English language learners or economically disadvantaged students. These targets determine whether the school makes "adequate yearly progress," or AYP, as measured by state standardized tests. A school can fail - even if it is making substantial progress for most of its students - if one category of students cannot meet the standards. The goal is for every student in public school to be proficient in reading and math by 2014.