As the effects of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act and its ensuing mandates for compliance are felt in classrooms across the United States, the issues of high-stakes testing and rigorous benchmark paradigms are becoming a daily challenge for teachers. NCLB mandates rigorous testing for every child in grades 3-8 in reading and math. Children who do not pass the tests will not move on to the next grade. Schools that do not improve their test scores every year by the federally determined increment called adequate yearly progress (AYP) also will face consequences. These schools may lose federal funding, and the federal government may ultimately restructure them. There are three related postulations that can be made about the culture of teaching: (1) the culture of teaching honors children, not content, as the focus of learning; (2) the culture of teaching honors continuous learning, collaboration, and mentoring; and (3) the culture of teaching honors collaborative problem solving, goal setting, and assessment. These assumptions honor the individuality of students and teachers, and have emerged from decades of research and practical implementation. They emphasize the unique problem-solving ability that has been shown to be a standard of good teaching. Paula Weaver, in this article, hopes to shed light upon how the testing requirements of NCLB affect the values from which these assumptions stem.