What am I learning from my Inquiry Project?

I am learning things about No Child Left Behind that i never knew before I started doing this Inquiry Project. Before this project I just thought No Child Left Behind was some program that people did not like because it made kids take tests. That explanation alone shows how little I used to know about this topic. After doing the research for this project I can now understand why so many people do not like No Child Left Behind. One thing i learned was about how schools are getting shut down because they are not meeting their Adequate Yearly Progress. I used to just think when a school did not meet their AYP there was just some sort of penalty or something to that effect. Instead I found out that schools will sometimes be closed down when they can not meet their AYP. I do not understand how that is something that can help children. The kids are having a hard time meeting the standards set for them, so instead of giving them more help we will just shut the school down. To me that makes no sense. One other thing I did not know was how much time is actually spent teaching for the HSPA. I never realized how much time is taken away from other things in order to try to prepare these kids for these tests. They spend so much time practicing for the HSPA that they start resenting and hating it. Kids will then miss class when they know they are going to do more HSPA studying. I figure that if you want a child to do good on a test or with anything they have to enjoy what they do. Constantly pounding this information into a kids head over and over and over again is only going to make them hate it.