In the last 12 years of No Child Left Behind, intellectual chatter, petitions, cries for reform and policy making language have dominated the discussion on the effects of the Act on educators. But new research from Muhlenberg College Drs. Michael Carbone and Sally Richwine has shed some light on the one voice they felt was missing from the dialog and was most vital to its progression: the teachers.

"Teachers are the problem as much as the solution," Carbone said at an open education forum at Emmaus High School March 20. "That's the unsolvable paradox. They are somehow the salvation and somehow the problem."

Carbone and Richwine found teachers were "woefully underrepresented," Richwine said. It was important to hear from a teacher's perspective about the result of the legislation in classrooms, how it affected students, their perspective on themselves and their own professions.

So they reached out. As teacher educators at Muhlenberg, Carbone and Richwine began their research by conducting open-ended interviews through their students. Student teachers approach- ed their co-ops with five questions and over the years 2005 to 2011, Carbone and Richwine collected reams of data in an array of responses that blew their first hypothesis out of the water.

Carbone said they had expected largely negative responses.

"We were just expecting universal hatred [of the Act]." What they got was what Richwine refers to as a "mixed bag" of responses, "more complex and ambiguous than we expected."

What Carbone and Richwine found was heightened accountability, as a provision of the Act, was perceived as a pro or a con depending on how it was defined. Carbone said no teacher interviewed had an adverse reaction to increased accountability. There were no negative comments and no resentment.

Teachers also responded the Act promoted consistency in the curriculum, while some found the curriculum too thin.

One of the chief complaints has been the challenge of covering a greater amount of material in order to meet the demands of the standardized tests without being given the time to explore any topic in depth. Teachers found this both creatively challenging and discouraging. But the greatest surprise to the researchers was in the former response.

When it came to creativity, the response was a two-sided coin, said Richwine. Teachers responded NCLB challenged them to find new ways to make the material engaging and there was a loss of creativity in the classroom.

Surburban elementary teachers, to note one example, found the restrictions on the curriculum stimulating in that it forced them to sharpen their creativity skills.

"It's now our job to make this interesting and engaging, and to do it efficiently," Carbone said of these teachers.

Urban elementary schools reported finding better funding resources and program support than before the implementation of the Act.

What Carbone and Richwine had expected between urban and suburban schools was a great disparity, but what they found was a surprising number of commonalities: sharpening teacher accountability, classroom skills and the challenge to "work smarter."

However, Carbone and Richwine frequently pointed out their research was not of scientific sampling of the community, but qualitative and skewed. Richwine says it leans to female teachers, especially those who have been in the profession longer. But this she believes reflects the demographic of the profession in general.

Of those interviewed, 38 represented secondary suburban schools; 33, suburban elementary schools; 35, urban secondary schools; and 47, urban elementary schools. In urban secondary, for example, 20 of the teachers interviewed were women, and of those 12 had been teaching for more than 10 years.

Carbone guessed most of the teachers interviewed were in general studies math, science, social studies and English as opposed to the arts.

Carbone and Richwine were surprised to find after the initial reactions in the early years feeling losses more than gains in terms of programs and freedom in the classroom, teachers who tended to look at the NLCB as a whole were showing positive feedback.

But when they got to standardized testing the response was negative, "more of a narrow lense through which to view student achievement."

This follows the inevitable issue of teaching to the test, and the resulting phenomenon of teachers who reported on missing out on "teachable moments" those questions from students which prompt a deeper discussion than the necessarily fast-paced nature of the NCLB curriculum imposes.

The research found a concern that while teachers welcomed having more data, they were not given the time or the platform to do anything with it in a way that would positively affect the student.

"There was a real concern that the data was trumping the child," Carbone said. "When children become their PSSA scores, you get slippage in other areas."

Overall, Carbone re- ported while some teachers found the NCLB Act had made their profession seem less skilled, others still found it more skilled in order to be effective in teaching the NCLB materials. Carbone was "heartened" by the research, particularly by the seriousness of thought given to responses by the teachers interviewed.

"We probably do know more about the best way to educate our children than we might be willing to admit," Carbone said. "But it would be too expensive. We have to think of education as an economy of scale; how to deliver the most for the least…People who know a lot about teaching are the teachers. They're the professionals. And theirs are the voices least often heard but should be the most sought after."