Standardized testing decreases the critical thinking being taught in schools. As Amy Kelly points out in her book “A Guide to High-Stakes Standardized Testing in the United States: A Historical Overview,” policies like No Child Left Behind emphasized test scores rather than critical thinking (Kelly, 2022). While No Child Left Behind had the right idea, the execution backfired when it came to quality of education. To expand on what was already mentioned, the policy was meant to use standardized tests to ensure that schools were meeting standards for their students, but instead it created an obsession with a narrow field of learning that takes away from the overall education of a student (Kelly, 2022). This policy made it so that math and English standardized tests measured the knowledge of students and, therefore, the performance of teachers, meaning that schools began to focus strictly on these two topics. Schools began to send more funding to the math and english departments to ensure higher test scores, while taking away from other types of learning like history, art, or other electives that can better prepare students for the real world and job force (Kelly, 2022). Dr. Margaret Pastor with the Noah Webster Educational Foundation notes that this obsession with test scores also puts pressure on teachers to “teach the test” rather than focus on overall learning, as they are often blamed for lower test scores (Pastor, 2021). Not only are students pressured to focus on testing and not other interests, but so are teachers, greatly narrowing the critical thinking skills being developed.