It's not exactly good beach reading, but if you have the stomach for an inside look at what federal education policy has wrought, download the three-volume report detailing an investigation into test cheating in the Atlanta public school system. The accounts of teachers and administrators changing student test scores to make them better — and threatening anyone who questioned what they were doing — will make you sick.  Test takers: Students in history class in New York.  Test takers: Students in history class in New York.  Atlanta is not the only school system to go astray, of course. This newspaper has uncovered test cheating by educators in the Washington, D.C., system and in several other states. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan earlier this year lamented that the No Child Left Behind law has become "too punitive" and has led to a "dumbing down of standards."  In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes a variety of opinions from outside writers. On political and policy matters, we publish opinions from across the political spectrum.  Roughly half of our columns come from our Board of Contributors, a group whose interests range from education to religion to sports to the economy. Their charge is to chronicle American culture by telling the stories, large and small, that collectively make us what we are.  We also publish weekly columns by Al Neuharth, USA TODAY's founder, and DeWayne Wickham, who writes primarily on matters of race but on other subjects as well. That leaves plenty of room for other views from across the nation by well-known and lesser-known names alike.  But Atlanta is the ultimate poster child for the disturbing, if unintended, consequences created by NCLB, with its insane mandate that 100% of students in the USA be proficient in math and reading by 2014.  Two forces at work here are creating winners and losers. The first is we've become a slave to metrics. (How do math scores in the U.S. compare with math scores in Shanghai and Singapore?) The second is the unrealistic demands of NCLB, expressed in annual yearly progress (AYP) benchmarks, have fueled a mad scramble for money that pits school systems, testing companies and tutoring services against each other. The prize for the winners: contracts, bonuses, federal subsidies and job security.  The pressure to make the numbers was so great in Atlanta that it spawned what investigators there called a "culture of fear," embodied in the unwavering mantra of Superintendent Beverly Hall that she would tolerate "no exceptions, no excuses."  But one Georgia expert on childhood education, Margie Cooper, president of the non-profit Inspired Practices in Early Education, told me that "the culture of fear is not just in Atlanta, it's everywhere in public education."  The big losers, not surprisingly, are the students. It's hard to conceive of a more egregious betrayal. Those who needed help the most — and would have gotten free tutoring if allowed to fail, rather than given a phony grade — got it the least. Every year, they were promoted with test scores they didn't earn, which meant that their scores in the next grade would have to be inflated even more, because under NCLB you're not allowed to go backward, or even stand still; you always have to be getting better.  The Atlanta report summed it up this way: "Most teachers, and many principals, described an oppressive environment … where the entire focus of the district had become achieving test scores rather than teaching children." It was, says Cooper, "a false game of pretending you were educating children."  Diane Ravitch, a former U.S. assistant secretary of Education who first supported NCLB and has become perhaps its best-known critic, wrote earlier this year that "drilling children on how to take tests discourages innovation and creativity, punishes divergent thinking and prioritizes skills over knowledge." And, I would add, leaves students who reach high school with good — but phony — test scores totally unprepared for a high school curriculum.  Proponents of this one-size-fits-all, assembly-line approach to education apparently believe that standardized testing on a firm timetable is the only way to make sure all students are learning what they need to know. The experience of my family in suburban Atlanta schools says that argument is bunk.  We took our two daughters out of the public school system when they reached middle-school age, just as the standardized testing craze was taking hold, and put them in private schools. The older one went to a school that featured an International Baccalaureate program in the upper school and several no-nonsense British teachers.  When I asked my daughter recently what the testing environment was like at her private middle school, she replied: "There was zero interest in testing. We had them a couple of days a year, but only because they were required. IB is not about bubbling things in (filling in test answer sheets); it's about learning how to be creative, and think things through."  Her younger sister went to a laid-back school run by aging hippies, where the students sprawled on pillows and called their teachers by their first names. No grades were given in junior high, and precious few tests. The focus was on learning how to think critically, do research, communicate and improve writing skills, all in preparation for a rigorous high school curriculum.  There were obvious differences between the schools, but some important similarities: a de-emphasis on testing, the absence of teachers' unions, and loads of parental involvement. Most important: Graduates at each had a record of acceptance at top universities that public high schools would die for.  Granted, it's not fair to compare a public middle school in south Atlanta with a private middle school in Atlanta's swanky Buckhead. But it is fair to ask: Why don't we scale back the obsession with "bubbling things in" and challenge students everywhere — no matter their ZIP code — to show their innovation and creativity?  For what it's worth, that's what the Chinese are doing.  Don Campbell, a former lecturer at Emory University in Atlanta, now lives in Dayton, Ohio, and is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors.  , visit our FAQ's. To report corrections and clarifications, contact Standards Editor  . For publication consideration in the newspaper, send comments to  . 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Educators in the Georgia capital changed kids' scores to meet federal standards. The real losers in all this: our children.